British Catholic Merchants in St Malo during the Glorious Revolution and the Nine Years War, 1688–1698

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
James M. Vaughn

During the 1670s and 1680s, the English East India Company pursued an aggressive programme of imperial expansion in the Asian maritime world, culminating in a series of armed assaults on the Mughal Empire. With important exceptions, most scholarship has viewed the Company's coercive imperialism in the later seventeenth century and the First Anglo-Mughal War as the results primarily, if not exclusively, of political and economic conditions in South Asia. This article re-examines and re-interprets this burst of imperial expansion in light of political developments in England and the wider English empire during the later Stuart era. The article contends that the Company's aggressive overseas expansion was pursued for metropolitan and pan-imperial purposes as much as for South Asian ones. The corporation sought to centralise and militarise the English presence in Asia in order both to maintain its control of England's trade to the East and in support of Stuart absolutism. By the eve of the Glorious Revolution, the Company's aggressive imperialism formed part of a wider political project to create an absolute monarchy in England and to establish an autocratic English empire overseas.


Author(s):  
Margaret J. M. Ezell

The birth of an heir to King James and Mary of Modena led to a crisis, with allegations that the child was not legitimate. Whig politicians were alarmed by the promotion of openly practicing Catholics in the army and at the court. Upon the invasion by William, the court fled into exile in France, establishing a rival court at St. Germain. While in exile, Jacobite poets including Jane Barker created manuscript volumes of verse and fiction to be published later. In England, supporters of King James including Heneage and Anne Finch retreated from London into a quiet exile in the countryside, and John Dryden was removed from his post as Poet Laureate.


Author(s):  
Alison Milbank

In Chapter 1, the Reformation is presented as the paradigmatic site of Gothic escape: the evil monastery can be traced back to Wycliffe’s ‘Cain’s castles’ and the fictional abbey ruin to the Dissolution. Central Gothic tropes are shown to have their origin in this period: the Gothic heroine is compared to the female martyrs of Foxe’s Acts and Monuments; the usurper figure is linked to the papal Antichrist; and the element of continuation and the establishment of the true heir is related to Reformation historiography, which needs to prove that the Protestant Church is in continuity with early Christianity—this crisis of legitimacy is repeated in the Glorious Revolution. Lastly, Gothic uncovering of hypocrisy is allied to the revelation of Catholicism as idolatry. The Faerie Queene is interpreted as a mode of Protestant Gothic and Spenser’s Una provides an allegorical gesture of melancholic distance, which will be rendered productive in later Gothic fiction.


Author(s):  
John H. Gendron

Abstract Much agreement exists among economic historians that an institutional structure which allows for broad participation in a country's economy is conducive to growth. With respect to England's institutional structure, changes that followed the Glorious Revolution of 1688 are given pride of place in recent literature. This article contributes to this literature by highlighting and explaining regulatory change that removed barriers to entry into the country's most vital industry, textiles, in the years between 1550 and 1640. However, although economic historians have tended to explain England's growth-facilitating institutions as arising abruptly through political revolution that placed constraints on the Crown, this article will elucidate change that was protracted, accretive, peaceful, and came through royal institutions. More specifically, this article argues that restrictive regulations, which were widely supported, were removed because Crown and Council, in consultation with local officials, recognized that enforcement would come at the cost of the greater priority of employment preservation.


1985 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles D. Tarlton

When we believed that Locke had writtenTwo treatises of governmentto justify the Glorious Revolution, we could say a great deal about his purposes in relation to the events of 1688–89. The book served to interpret those events, to disclose their underlying meaning; philosophy and action were joined in such a manner that both gained lustre from the link. But, now we have generally accepted the view that Locke actually wroteTwo treatisesin the partisan heat of the Exclusion debate, and we have stopped saying very much of anything about the book's relation to William III and the events of the year in which Locke anonymously published it.


1978 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 193-208
Author(s):  
Dennis A. Rubini

William of Orange tried to be as absolute as possible. Inroads upon the power of the executive were fiercely resisted: indeed, William succeeded in keeping even the judiciary in a precarious state of independence. To maintain the prerogative and gain the needed supplies from parliament, he relied upon a mixed whig-tory ministry to direct court efforts. Following the Glorious Revolution, the whigs had divided into two principle groups. One faction led by Robert Harley and Paul Foley became the standard-bearers of the broadly based Country party, maintained the “old whig” traditions, did not seek office during William's reign, tried to hold the line on supply, and led the drive to limit the prerogative. The “junto,” “court,” or “new” whigs, on the other hand, were led by ministers who, while in opposition during the Exclusion crisis, held court office, aggressively sought greater offices, and wished to replace monarchy with oligarchy. They soon joined tory courtiers in opposing many of the Country party attempts to place additional restrictions upon the executive. To defend the prerogative and gain passage for bills of supply, William also developed techniques employed by Charles II. By expanding the concept and power of the Court party, he sought to bring together the executive and legislative branches of government through a large cadre of crown office-holders (placemen) who sat, voted, and directed the votes of others on behalf of the government when matters of importance arose in the Commons. So too, William claimed the right to dissolve parliament and call new elections not on a fixed date, as was to become the American practice, but at the time deemed most propitious over first a three-year and then (after 1716) a seven year period.


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