Glorious Revolution
▶ Explore on the mapThe Glorious Revolution of 1688 replaced James II with William of Orange and Mary, and established in practice that the English crown could not be held by a Catholic or exercised without Parliament. James, who succeeded his brother Charles II in 1685, pursued a policy of toleration for Catholics, kept a standing army and used the courts to suppress dissent; the birth of a male heir in June 1688 raised the prospect of a permanent Catholic dynasty. Seven leading nobles invited William, the Protestant husband of James's daughter, to intervene. William landed at Torbay in November with a Dutch fleet, English support melted away, and James fled to France in December. Parliament regarded the throne as vacant and offered it jointly to William and Mary in the Bill of Rights of 1689, which also prohibited a standing army in peacetime without consent, imposed frequent parliaments and secured freedom of speech in debate. The Scottish Claim of Right followed, and the Toleration Act of 1689 granted limited freedom of worship. The settlement linked the crown to Protestant succession and, after the Act of Union of 1707, to Scotland as well. It was less a popular uprising than a parliamentary coup, remembered afterwards as proof that sovereignty lay with the crown in Parliament.