Inglorious Revolution: 1688 as libertarians see it

Abstract

The following article dwells on the problem of interpreting the so called Glorious Revolution of 1688 from a libertarian point of view. The sources analyzed are royal edicts, declarations, court judgments, monographs by British historians, materials from the Internet. The author disagrees with the settled opinion that the state coup at the end of the 17^th century referred to as the Glorious Revolution was caused by the authoritarian rule of King James II Stuart who headed fanatic Catholic reaction forces and the success of the coup meant the victory of the forces of freedom, tolerance to faith and economic progress. Having referred to a number of normative legal acts and historical facts, the author develops the idea that king James II and his supporters Jacobists though not all of them were of the catholic faith sought actually to establish in Britain fundamental for that period human rights, i.e. freedom of conscience, entrepreneurship and right to bear arms. The Glorious Revolution and the enthronement of the House of Orange-Nassau were desired by only the oligarchal Anglican elite. The victory brought not development but a political and legal regress and economic stagnation. The regress lead to the restoration of limited religious, political and economic rights of Catholics, deprivation of rights of atheists and return from the free trade introduced by the Stuarts (laissez faire) to protectionism and further economic crisis of two regions of the kingdom, i.e. Scotland and Ireland. The author reminds that several norms of the Bill of Rights praised by historians were against a case of the King’s Bench which happened 3 years before and not cancelled. Thus, the provisions of the Bill of Rights went against the fundamentals of English case law, which made the enthronement of William III & II legal. Summarizing, the author proposes to rename the events of 1688 and the results  from the Glorious Revolution to inglorious.