Zeitschrift für interdisziplinäre Geschichte, xli:2 (Herbst, 2010), 227–242.

THE MAKING OF A REVOLUTION?

Hamish Scott
The Making of a Revolution?

1688: The First Modern Revolution. By Steve Pincus (New Haven, Yale
Universitätsverlag, 2009) 647 S. $40.00

Interpretations of England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689
fall into two categories, both of which originated in the attitudes
of later seventeenth-century contemporaries. Traditionell, em-
phasis was placed on the domestic causes of the dramatic removal
of James II (1685–1688) from the throne. Scholars have pointed to
James’ ill-judged domestic policies and, more recently, to the ex-
tent to which these actions had been anticipated during the ªnal
years of his brother Charles II’s reign (1660–1685). James’ deter-
mination to create what appeared to contemporaries as a Catholic
and absolutist regime inspired resentment and, before long, offen
resistance. That was sufªcient in 1688 to cause him to abandon his
realm. This approach views the opposition to him as broadly
based—and the Revolution as effectively a national movement—
establishing English religious freedom and political liberty under
the auspices of a parliamentary monarchy vastly different from the
continental kingdoms in which absolutism held sway. This so-
called Whig interpretation was dominant until the 1960s, receiv-
ing its classic exposition in Macaulay’s History of England and its
most important twentieth-century statement in The English Revo-
lution, 1688–89, written by Trevelyan, Macaulay’s great-nephew,
to celebrate the 250-year anniversary.1

The second line of interpretation, which has gained ground
during recent decades, returns to an older Tory view. It challenges
the Whig assumption of widespread support, arguing instead for

Hamish Scott is Wardlaw Professor of History Emeritus, University of St. Andrews, and Hon-
orary Senior Research Fellow, University of Glasgow. He is the author of The Birth of a Great
Power System, 1740–1815 (London, 2005); The Emergence of the Eastern Powers 1756–75 (Neu
York, 2001).

1 Thomas B. Macaulay (Hrsg. Charles Harding Firth), The History of England from the Accession
of James the Second (London, 1913–1915), I–III; George M. Trevelyan, The English Revolution,
1688–89 (New York, 1938).

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228 | HAMISH SCOTT

an international conspiracy involving only a small minority of
England’s peerage and gentry and culminating in the invasion of
William III, Dutch Stadtholder (1672–1702) and eventual English
king (1689–1702), who wanted to deploy British resources in the
struggle against French power but enjoyed surprisingly little sup-
port within England.

The two approaches are not mutually exclusive; scholars
have recently combined them to form a composite interpreta-
tion. The Revolution itself has been variously described as
“moderate,” “sensible,” “respectable,” “reasonable,” “godly” and
“bloodless”—all curious adjectives to apply to a process that in-
volved sudden political change. In der Tat, the idea that the regime
change of 1688–1689 amounted to a “revolution,” in the modern
sense of the term, has often been questioned. Edmund Burke fa-
mously described it as “a revolution not made but prevented,”
preferring instead to characterize the decisive events of November
and December 1688 as “a just [and necessary] civil war.”2

Believing what he clearly views as a cosy consensus to be
wrong, Pincus’ bold, vigorous, and provocative new book sets out
to overthrow almost every piece of the established picture and to
substitute the interpretation emblazoned in his subtitle; 1688 War
nothing less than “The First Modern Revolution.”

Pincus consulted a vast range of manuscript authorities and
printed primary sources, as well as a voluminous secondary litera-
tur. The extent of his research is deeply impressive, obwohl die
work of other historians is usually cited only to express disagree-
ment, often in strong and even querulous terms. The book is, von
any standards,
lengthy—the text alone approaching 250,000
Wörter, and the footnotes at least another 70,000—but it is not sub-
tle or nuanced; it is frequently repetitious and internally inconsis-
tent. Hindurch, Pincus displays a bluntness of argument that re-
calls the literary technique of Samuel Johnson, the eighteenth-
century English man of letters who never employed a rapier if a
bludgeon were to hand. Pincus often resorts to bald judgments
that provoke skepticism and, at times, outright disagreement on
ªrst reading, only to qualify these hasty opinions ten pages or one

2 On this judgment and its implications, see John Greville Agard Pocock, “The Fourth
English Civil War: Dissolution, Desertion, and Alternative Histories in the Glorious Revolu-
tion,” in Lois G. Schwoerer (Hrsg.), The Revolution of 1688–1689: Changing Perspectives (Neu
York, 1992), 52–64.

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THE MAKING OF A REVOLUT I ON? | 229

chapter later. The work would have beneªted considerably from
better copyediting, as well as a vigorous application of the pruning
shears.

Two other important features stand out in Pincus’ approach.
The ªrst is, in contrast to many recent accounts, a focus ªrmly on
England after 1685. The important and inºuential suggestion,
most persuasively advanced by Western, that James’ policies were
a continuation and extension of those adopted by Charles II
(1660–1685) during his later, more autocratic, years and that
James’ reign was the climax of trends that went back at least to
1681, meet only with Pincus’ silence.3 Even more remarkably, Die
“new British history” and its methodological potential
verlassen
Pincus unmoved; he devotes his attention to James as English king
rather than British ruler. Scotland, Ireland, and the English colo-
nies in North America receive mention only when they furnish
support for the wider arguments advanced.4 Similarly, the interna-
tional dimension highlighted by recent authors occupies a subor-
dinate place in the story, despite Pincus’ much-trumpeted inten-
tions to the contrary.

Zweitens, his is not a conventional narrative but an episodic
series of essays that are historiographical as well as historical and
appear in broadly chronological sequence. Each of them addresses
a central dimension of the wider argument—the “Practice of
Catholic Modernity,” “Popular Revolution,” and so on. In diesem
Weg, Pincus assembles the individual building blocks in the overall
interpretation consecutively. One consequence is that the detailed
and important discussion of James II’s thinking about foreign poli-
cy (Kapitel 11) appears in Part IV, which examines post-1688 de-
velopments, not in Part II, which covers the opposition to royal
policy before the Revolution. Allgemeiner, this book assumes a
prior knowledge of events and trends; those readers in need of
more background would do better to consult Harris’ recent com-
prehensive survey and even the established accounts by Jones and
Speck, together with Israel’s impressive anniversary collection.5

John R. Western, Monarchy and Revolution: The English State in the 1680s (London, 1972);

3
Grant Tapsell, The Personal Rule of Charles II, 1681–85 (Woodbridge, 2007).
4 Pincus himself indicates, but does not fully explain, this decision, but see Tim Harris, Rev-
olution: The Great Crisis of the British Monarchy, 1685–1720 (London, 2006), xvi.
5 Harris, Revolution; James Rees Jones, The Revolution of 1688 in England (London, 1972);
William Arthur Speck, Reluctant Revolutionaries: Englishmen and the Revolution of 1688 (Neu

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230 | HAMISH SCOTT

Pincus’ central arguments are not in doubt: 1688 indeed re-
sulted from a clash between two diametrically opposed moderniz-
ing programs and constituted a genuine revolution. James II’s aims
were Catholic, absolutist, and mercantilist, seeking to acquire
further colonial territory and exploit it through such chartered
companies as the East India Company and the Royal African
Unternehmen. Im Gegensatz, his Whig opponents sought religious co-
existence, limited monarchy exercised through parliament, Und
enhanced prosperity through free trade and the development of
manufacturing. Pincus writes, “Far from being aristocratic, peace-
ful and consensual, I show that the Revolution of 1688–89, wie
most modern revolutions, was popular, violent and extremely di-
visive” (29). This contention throws down the gauntlet to almost
all previous historiography, which is overwhelmingly concerned
with the relative importance of the internal and international di-
mensions and with the extent to which James was the author of his
own misfortunes. In its place, Pincus offers a bold and sometimes
strident thesis that highlights the truly revolutionary process un-
derway during the later 1680s.

Pincus’ unitary explanation for what was a complex series of
events in itself challenges recent scholarship, which discovers sev-
eral separate developments, operating on distinctive chronologies,
which coalesced to produce the so-called “Revolution of 1688–
89.” The breakdown of the classic Whig interpretation since the
1960s has been accompanied by the recognition of at least four
crucial changes that occurred during these months.6 First was the
“Tory Anglican revolution,” which forced James into an impor-
tant series of concessions during the autumn and could have al-
lowed him to remain on the throne, at the price of abandoning
much of his program. William III’s invasion destroyed this option.
The second change was the “dynastic revolution” that put an
end to the principle of hereditary succession, accentuating the ex-
clusion of James II and his direct descendants from the throne; Es
failed in 1680 during the “Exclusion Crisis” but succeeded in
1689. The “Whig revolution” took place during the weeks and

York, 1988); Jonathan I. Israel (Hrsg.), The Anglo-Dutch Moment: Essays on the Glorious Revolution
and Its World Impact (New York, 1991).
6 Robert Beddard, “The Unexpected Whig Revolution of 1688,” in idem (Hrsg.), The Revo-
lutions of 1688: The Andrew Browning Lectures for 1988 (Oxford, 1991), 11–101, contains much of
interest for what follows.

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THE MAKING OF A REVOLUT I ON? | 231

months after James left England on December 23, shattering the
fragile coalition with the Tories that had contributed to this ºight
and imposing a more radical settlement. Endlich, historians have
identiªed a ªnancial and administrative revolution during the
1690S, which resulted in the British state’s emergence as a conti-
nental power in the struggle against Louis XIV. Many recent
scholars, seem to view it as the source of the most radical changes,
institutionalizing Parliament’s place in government and the consti-
Unterricht. Pincus, Jedoch, portrays all of these established dimen-
sions as the consequence of a more fundamental process of mod-
ernization, which was political as much as social and economic.

modernization and revolution The adoption of such a one-
dimensional framework at a time when many historians are skepti-
cal about unitary explanations is surprising. Though indicating the
boldness of Pincus’ re-interpretation, the approach raises impor-
tant questions about its intellectual origins. One principal founda-
tion is the social-science theory of the 1960s and 1970s, speciªcally
the writings of Huntington, Skocpol, Und, to a lesser degree,
Tilly.7 Another is the experience of revolution in France after 1789
and in twentieth-century Russia, China, Latin America, und Iran,
which have clearly shaped his paradigm. The attempt to learn
from both theory and subsequent history is as admirable as it is un-
usual; the second chapter, entitled “Rethinking Revolutions,” of-
fers much of interest in this regard.

The central premise of the book is that prior and, by implica-
tion, successful state modernization is the essential prerequisite for
any revolution. In Pincus’ words, “Modernizing states create an
ideological opening” (39). Noch, he may press the analogy with
Bourbon France too far. He argues that Louis XVI, the last ancien
régime king, who came to the throne in 1774, provoked the out-
break of the French revolution through his efforts to modernize,
exactly as James II had sought to do a century earlier. The impact
of these efforts, Jedoch, as distinct from their intention, War
much less dramatic than he assumes. Vor allem, the Bourbon mon-

7
Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, 1968); Theda
Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China (Neu
York, 1979); Charles Tilly, “Does Modernization Breed Revolution?” Comparative Politics,
V (1973), 425–447.

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232 | HAMISH SCOTT

archy disintegrated not because it attempted to modernize but be-
cause it proved unable to do so under ªnancial duress.

Current scholarship about the French Revolution fails to sup-
port Pincus’ standpoint in yet another way. Historians of the past
generation clearly recognized that neither the political upheavals
of the summer of 1789 nor their increasingly radical aftermath had
much to do with the Bourbon regime’s breakdown at the end of
the 1780s.8 These scholars make an important distinction between
the administrative and, less certainly, ideological demise of monar-
chical government and the social and political revolution that
moved into the vacuum created by the collapse of the ancien
régime. Unlike twentieth-century revolutions, in which protest
movements could acquire genuine power, partly due to mass
communications, and in which governing systems could succumb
to factions both inside and outside the ruling elite, those of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were usually created by ad-
ministrative and political implosion rather than by modernizing
changes.

James Harrington made this very point in the mid-seven-
teenth century with regard to England’s revolution of the 1640s
and 1650s: “The dissolution of this Government hath caused the
[Civil] Krieg, not the War the dissolution of this Government.”9
The same point applies to late eighteenth-century France; the rea-
sons for the fall of the French Bourbon monarchy are not to be
confused with the causes of the radical direction subsequently
taken by the government, particularly after the winter of 1791/92,
which constituted the real French Revolution. The Bourbon
monarchy failed because of ªnancial disarray and the political
impasse that accompanied it, which permitted the radical rev-
olutionaries eventually to gain power. Regardless of the situation
in twentieth-century China or Russia, the Bourbon government
died a natural death; it was not brought down by its opponents.
Likewise, according to the established interpretation, England’s
Revolution was contingent on the paralysis of James II’s regime,
and the erosion of James’ support during the seven weeks between
William III’s landing at Tor Bay (November 5, 1688) and his sec-

8 The best guide on this point is William Doyle, The Origins of the French Revolution (Neu
York, 1999; orig. pub.1980).
9 Harrington’s observation is widely quoted. Sehen, Zum Beispiel, Lawrence Stone, The Causes
of the English Revolution 1529–1642 (London, 1972), 42.

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THE MAKING OF A REVOLUT I ON? | 233

ond and successful ºight abroad. Causes should not be confused
with consequences.

A second and more important reason for hesitating about
Pincus’ new paradigm is its dependence upon a picture of English
society, economy, and politics as having become modern by the
later decades of the seventeenth century. Believing that a modern
revolution can take place only within a modern society and econ-
omy, Pincus takes great pains to portray later Stuart England as
solch. Despite his persuasive pitch that England’s surge in manufac-
turing and commerce, especially overseas commerce, during the
late seventeenth century is a more important indicator of eco-
nomic progress than internal trade, his notion that England had
become a “modern” economy and society by the century’s ªnal
decades remains open to doubt. The third chapter, insbesondere,
exaggerates the pace, as well as the extent, of this transformation.
Noch einmal, Pincus seems to push the evidence further than it
will go: “England in 1685 was not an agrarian capitalist society; Es
was a capitalist society” (59). Later on that very page, he describes
England—much more persuasively—as merely “more urban,
more commercial,” exemplifying the kind of
subsequent
molliªcation to which he frequently he subjects his more outland-
ish pronouncements. In der Tat, he makes a further signiªcant adjust-
ment to the description: “By most measures . . . England in 1685
was a modernising commercial society” (90).

Much of Pincus’ evidence for the “modernity” of later Stuart
England derives from its southern half, and even the southeast.
Large areas—especially in the southwest and the northwest, Aber
also parts of the Midlands—were much more traditional in their
social structures and economic arrangements, and still relatively
isolated due to poor internal communications. Pincus makes an
intriguing case for the importance of coffee houses in the major
urban centers (and even in some of the smaller communities) als
sites for political mobilization (81), but he never systematically ex-
plores the constraints to their spread. Noch, opposition to James
arose not merely in the capital and in certain provincial cities but
also in the more traditional regions where the forces of modernity
had less impact—above all, Derbyshire, Yorkshire, and Notting-
hamshire, which heavily supported William III. In this connec-
tion, Pincus’ disregard of the situation in Scotland and Ireland,
which were even less “modern” than these regions, is especially

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234 | HAMISH SCOTT

problematical, given that these parts of Britain were alienated by
James’ policies, zu.

forces,

Pincus does not avoid the danger of turning people into the
puppets of external
thus diminishing their individual
Agentur. Even in a watered-down form, “modernization” can
never be more than a single dimension in an explanatory frame-
arbeiten. It may have been a precondition for important changes of
the kind that took place in 1688–1689, but it cannot explain them
vollständig. Pincus is ambiguous on this point, at the outset offer-
ing modernization as the key development but in the chapters that
follow explicating, in a more conventional way, the role of per-
sonalities and the contingent interaction of events, without ever
resolving the tension.

religious absolutism The account of the growing opposition
to James’ regime and its actions is equally open to criticism. Es ist
most troubling aspect is the outright rejection of a tenet central to
scholarship at least since the nineteenth century—that resistance
arose largely out of a fear of the king’s Catholicizing policies,
which at the time were ineradicably associated with Louis XIV’s
absolute monarchy in France, which English contemporaries
styled “arbitrary government.” Pincus rejects this interpretation
presumably on the grounds that “modern” revolutions cannot
proceed from such traditional sentiments as religion. As a case in
Punkt, he ªrst labels the Monmouth rebellion, which had a
strongly Protestant inspiration, as “conservative” only to deny it
any religious motivation several pages later (110, 116)! Curiously,
Jedoch, he provides abundant support for the very view that he
wishes to consign to oblivion. Sometimes Pincus is his own best
critic.

Pincus repeatedly emphasizes the success of James’ initiatives,
in both the religious and political ªelds, but he also demonstrates
that Protestant Englishmen and Englishwomen were right to be
concerned about the direction that his policies were taking. A suc-
cession of contentious issues during James II’s short reign aroused
suspicion, resentment, Und, eventually, opposition: his disregard
for the Test Act and his suspension of the Penal Laws, which dis-
criminated against Roman Catholics; the insertion of Catholics
into the ofªcer corps of the enlarged royal army and into Oxford
and Cambridge colleges; the remodeling of town corporations and

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THE MAKING OF A REVOLUT I ON? | 235

charters, and the dismissal of Anglican lords-lieutenant; and legal
causes célèbres, like the case of Godden versus Hailes, trumped up
by James to prove a legal point, and the trial of the Seven Bishops
who opposed the king’s Declaration of Indulgence. Religion was
involved in each one, sometimes crucially.

Pincus’ own study contains ample evidence to justify the fear
that James intended to introduce Catholic absolutism. In Chapter
5, he demonstrates the extent to which French Gallican ideas
inºuenced James’ religious policies. James was deeply immersed in
continental theological debates, reading the writings of Bishop
Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Gallicanism’s principal theologian, Und
both the Scottish and English Declarations of Indulgence in 1687
were strongly redolent of Gallican doctrines. Even more impor-
tantly, Pincus provides clear and compelling evidence, contra
other recent scholarship, that James’ pursuit of religious toleration
War, in fact, a stalking horse and that his intention was to establish
French-style Gallican Catholicism throughout his realms (138). Als
Pincus writes of James’ attitude, “Liberty of conscience was a
means to an end, not a deeply felt principle” (137). Pincus even
quotes the king’s hope that “‘God would give me his grace to suf-
fer death for the true Catholic religion,’” and he repeatedly
stresses the centrality of religious aims to his policies (125).

A wider problem with this downplaying, and even outright
rejection, of religious factors, is that, notwithstanding later Stuart
still
England’s putative rapid modernization, contemporaries
viewed the world through a religious lens. In Hill’s words, “Reli-
gion was the idiom in which the men of the seventeenth century
thought.”10 Claydon, a subsequent scholar of the Revolution,
similarly referred to “the persisting inºuence of the early modern
protestant world view.”11 It is difªcult, if not impossible, to view
organized belief as outside the core of English social life during the
ªnal decades of the seventeenth century, however advanced was
its much-vaunted “modernity” and its corollary, “secularization.”
Though Pincus rightly notes the later exclusion of Roman Catho-
lics from William and Mary’s Toleration Act (433), its implications
for his arguments about the unimportance of religion are left un-
sagte. The very fact that Roman Catholics were excluded in this

10 Christopher Hill, “Recent Interpretations of the Civil War," im gleichen, Puritanism and Rev-
olution: Studies in Interpretation of the English Revolution of the 17th Century (London, 1958), 29.
11 Tony Claydon, William III and the Godly Revolution (New York, 1996), 229.

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236 | HAMISH SCOTT

way hints at the persistence of confessional differences, and hence
religion.

The abundant recent scholarship devoted to the political ide-
ology of later Stuart England emphasizes that both Whig and Tory
theory was ªrmly grounded in Christianity and a deeply religious
worldview.12 Most contemporaries did not make Pincus’ distinc-
tion between civil and religious liberty (122), which is possible
only within the political culture and society of later centuries.
Seventeenth-century men and women saw political freedom as
rooted in, and even dependent upon, religious freedom, Und
viewed politics from an explicitly confessional perspective. Der
more secular worldview characteristic of later societies—which
Max Weber dubbed the “disenchantment of
the world”—
remained in its infancy, its realization still many decades in the fu-
ture when James II abandoned his throne.13 Indeed, Pincus himself
writes, “Europeans had not lost their profound religious beliefs in
the seventeenth century,” an unexceptionable conclusion that calls
into question a central plank of his own interpretation (348).

Pincus takes remarkably little account of the continental
background against which James’ religious policies evolved, von-
spite his wholly admirable intention to establish a ªrm “Euro-
pean” perspective for the study (28). On the continent, the 1680s
saw both a revival of religious conºict, after a generation of rela-
tive calm, and a notable Catholic advance. England’s Protestants
saw their faith everywhere forced onto the defensive.14 Gilbert
Burnet, Williamite propagandist and future Bishop of Salisbury, als
well as a noted chronicler of the dramatic events of this epoch, ar-
ticulated this concern from his Dutch exile in 1686: “If God have
yet any pleasure in the Reformation He will raise it up again,
though I confess the deadness of those Churches that own it make
me apprehend that it is to be quite laid in ashes.”15

In the previous year, the Catholic Neuburg branch of the rul-

Ebenda., 230, 90–147 (Chapters 3–4).
12
13
See the suggestive and subtle essay by Blair Worden, “The Question of Secularization,”
in Alan Houston and Pincus (Hrsg.), A Nation Transformed: England after the Restoration (Neu
York, 2001), 20–40.
Sehen, Zum Beispiel, John Miller, Popery and Politics in England 1660–1688 (New York, 1973),
14
255. For evidence of this point, see Mark Goldie (Hrsg.), Entring Book of Roger Morrice. III. Der
Reign of James II 1685–1687 (Woodbridge, 2007), xxvi, 35, 37, 39, 42.
15 Thomas Elliot Simpson Clarke and Helen Charlotte Foxcroft, A Life of Gilbert Burnet,
Bishop of Salisbury (New York, 1907), 220–221.

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THE MAKING OF A REVOLUT I ON? | 237

ing family had succeeded to the Electorate of the Palatinate, tradi-
tionally the leader of militant Protestantism within the Holy Ro-
man Empire. In far-away Hungary, the Habsburg re-conquest of
the kingdom’s central parts facilitated the completion of a Catholic
offensive (begun during the 1670s) against the Calvinist communi-
ties that had thrived during the Ottoman occupation of more than
a century. In 1686, the duke of Savoy’s army had invaded the Al-
pine valleys of the Vaudois (west of Turin) in his territory of
Piedmont in an attempt to extirpate the Protestant communities—
the descendants of the medieval Waldensians—killing or impris-
oning many of them.

Louis XIV, who assisted Savoy’s initiative, played a major role
in arousing Protestant fears in England and elsewhere. He began
an offensive against France’s sizeable Huguenot minority immedi-
ately after the peace of Nijmegen in 1679, employing both persua-
sion and direct force, abetted by the celebrated dragonnades, to ef-
fect the forced emigration of 200,000 of his subjects. The Edict of
Fontainebleau, issued in 1685, deprived French Protestants of the
right to worship according to their own faith, which they had en-
joyed since the Edict of Nantes at the close of the previous cen-
tury.

Developments in France were a mirror in which Englishmen
and Englishwomen viewed the actions of their own king.16 Their
wariness about the growth of James’ standing army, Zum Beispiel,
proceeded partly from an awareness of the French mobilization in
the onslaught against the Huguenots (183). News of the dramatic
events on the other side of the English Channel, Jedoch, did not
spread through the press. The London Gazette, the only newspaper
published in England with any regularity, which was ªrmly under
the control of James II’s government, made no reference at all to
the crusade against French Protestants. This very absence of a free
press raises questions about the nature of the political mobilization
that is fundamental to Pincus’ thesis of a modern revolution. Nev-
ertheless, news of the persecution of Huguenots traveled widely.
Despite government censorship, pamphlets circulated, English
merchants trading to France and to the Dutch Republic (Wo
many Protestants also took refuge) spread the word, and the Hu-

16
See the pioneering article by Esmond de Beer, “The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes
and English Public Opinion,” Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London, XVIII (1947–1952),
292–310.

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238 | HAMISH SCOTT

guenot propaganda machine was in full operation with newspa-
pers and circulars.

The French Protestant diaspora was an even more effective
conduit. The fact that England at the beginning of the 1680s con-
tained between 8,000 Und 10,000 French Protestants, the descen-
dants of refugees from earlier persecutions, who lived primarily in
London, southeast England, and East Anglia, encouraged many
Huguenots to seek exile there, as well as in the Dutch Republic
and Brandenburg-Prussia.17 Those who came to England during
James II’s reign told of the atrocities from which they had ºed.
During the 1680s, 8,000 refugees either joined established Protest-
ant communities or created new settlements in the southwest and
west of England. In 1687, when James II’s Catholicizing policies
were at their peak, 2,500 arrived. Their impact, darüber hinaus, War
even greater than their numbers. In London during the seven-
10. Jahrhundert, the French Protestant churches were located at the
western edge of urban settlement, close to the areas inhabited by
members of both houses of parliament and those who were other-
wise part of the social and political elite. The revocation of the
Edict of Nantes was known in London within three weeks of its
Verkündung.

The Gazette’s continuing silence concerning these events, In
the midst of detailed reports from all over the continent, inspired
disdain and fear.18 James II was hardly eager to emulate his French
royal counterpart in brutality. Andererseits, he seems to have
been opposed to violent persecution, considering it to be un-
Christian. But believing the Huguenots to be heretics as well as
antimonarchical and sympathetic with republicanism, he at-
tempted to discourage their arrival in England.19 His Protestant
English subjects, Jedoch, measured his aims and assessed his ac-
tions with one eye on events in France. Few could have been
much in doubt about what Catholic absolutism would mean in
üben, with the French example before their eyes. As Pincus re-
peatedly maintains, Louis XIV’s regime was the inspiration for
much of James’ actions. Yet Pincus mentions the revocation of the

See Robin D. Gwynn, “The Arrival of Huguenot Refugees in England, 1680–1705,”
17
and “The Distribution of Huguenot Refugees in England,” Proceedings of the Huguenot Society
of London, XXI (1965–1970), 366–373 and 404–436, jeweils.
18
See Pincus, 1688, 177–178, for the view of John Evelyn.
19 Robin D. Gwynn, “James II in the Light of His Treatment of Huguenot Refugees in
England, 1685–1686,” English Historical Review, XCII (1977), 820–833, clariªes James’ views.

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THE MAKING OF A REVOLUT I ON? | 239

Edict of Nantes, which framed the politics of James’ reign, a mere
handful of times (131, 137, 176, 177–178).

Pincus supplies abundant evidence of the importance that
James’ subjects attached to religious belief. One particularly glar-
ing example is Pincus’ quotation of Ambrose Barnes, a Newcastle-
upon-Tyne merchant, ostensibly to illustrate the English interest
in European events: “‘The desolations of Bohemia and in the
valleys of Piedmont lay very near [Mein] heart’” (308). But the
quotation also reveals awareness of, and concern for, the fate of
seventeenth-century European Protestantism, since in both places
erwähnt, the forces of Catholicism were triumphant.

Specialists in later seventeenth-century ecclesiastical history
will wish to examine other aspects of Pincus’ book that appear
suspect. His analysis of William III’s appointments to the bench
of bishops, presented in Chapter 13,
is interesting and well-
documented, but his challenge to the recent emphasis on the
moderate Tory outlook of the hierarchy and thus the limited
change after 1688–1689 once again seems to go beyond what the
detailed evidence will bear (405). Darüber hinaus, the exclusion of
Scotland and Ireland as examples of a concerted religious opposi-
tion to James amounts to a further distortion of contemporary re-
ality. In der Tat, Harris makes the compelling case that James in-
tended his Scottish realm to be a laboratory to test pro-Catholic
policies before applying them to England.20 There, as in Ireland,
the confessional battle lines were drawn much more sharply than
in the southern kingdom. Parties motivated largely, and some-
times entirely, by their Protestantism played a larger role in the
outcome of the political struggle.

the scope of the revolution Pincus scornfully dismisses the
contention of recent scholarship that England’s nobility and gentry
provided leadership and assisted the Dutch invasion, advancing in-
stead a modern-style revolution that involved much broader par-
ticipation than just the political elite.21 However, whether the
general suspicion, resentment, and fear in the air regarding James’
policies ever translated into a decisive and active popular resistance
is difªcult to establish. Pincus’ pages provide much more evidence

20 Harris, Revolution, 144–181.
21 For the opposing view, see John Philipps Kenyon, The Nobility in the Revolution of 1688
(Hull, 1963); David Hosford, Nottingham, Nobles and the North: Aspects of the Revolution of 1688
(Hampden, Conn., 1976).

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240 | HAMISH SCOTT

for passive resistance than for direct opposition, at least before
William III’s army landed and advanced toward London. Despite
Pincus’ best arguments to the contrary, genuine activism, wenn oben-
posed to the rumble of resentment, in the closing months of 1688
appears to have been slight. The established story of a rebellion or-
chestrated by members of the political nation, with some degree of
wider support, is still preferable.

There is also a crucial question of chronology that needs to be
settled. The resistance undoubtedly gained momentum after Wil-
liam III’s landing; it became especially important in December
1688 and the early months of 1689. What Pincus calls “mass poli-
tics” was clearly instrumental in breaking the impasse between
Whigs and Tories within the Convention (284–286), but decisive
instances of widespread opposition before James II’s regime began
to crumble are much more difªcult to ªnd. Although Pincus’ ex-
tensive research discovered a greater scale of violence than hith-
erto believed, its impact upon the outcome appears to have been
less than he claims.

The connection of foreign policy with the opposition to the
Stuart monarchy during the later 1680s is the subject of the longest
and most valuable chapter. Pincus’ ªrst book, Protestantism and Pa-
triotism, was an important, highly original, Und, in some respects,
controversial study of the ªrst two Anglo-Dutch wars; echoes of
numerous themes from it are in the book under review.22 Indeed,
his study of 1688 can be seen as the logical conclusion to what he
styled the “secularizing trend in political ideology” in the earlier
book.23 In the preface to 1688, Pincus writes that he “began the
project with modest aims [Und] hoped to write an interpretative
essay suggesting that the international dimension of the Revolu-
tion of 1688–89 was underappreciated” (xi). Though he empha-
sizes the European nature of this later study, his own interpretive
framework is to redirect attention to the domestic dimension of
these events, after its frequent eclipse by the international perspec-
tive for several decades.

Within the English domestic sphere, Jedoch, he makes a
strong case for the importance of foreign affairs. He effectively dis-
plays James II’s growing animosity toward the Dutch Republic as
both an economic and colonial rival and the home of the hated re-

22 Pincus, Protestantism and Patriotism: Ideologies and the Making of English Foreign Policy, 1650–
1668 (New York, 1996).
23

Ebenda., 447.

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THE MAKING OF A REVOLUT I ON? | 241

publicanism, suggesting that by the end of 1687, James wanted to
launch a fourth Anglo-Dutch war. In keeping with his earlier
Studie, Pincus demonstrates the extent of contemporary knowl-
edge of, and interest in, European affairs, and argues cogently that
James II’s pro-French policies and the accompanying hostility to-
ward the Dutch Republic were important causes of his regime’s
growing unpopularity. Though Pincus may exaggerate the sig-
niªcance of these factors, he establishes beyond any doubt that
many contemporaries were moving from the more recent anti-
Dutch diplomatic orientation toward an anti-French one long be-
fore William III’s invading force landed on English soil. Pincus
demonstrates that the enmity toward Louis XIV, even to the point
of justifying war with France, was rapidly gaining ground among
England’s political class before the Dutch invasion; this hostility
was not just the product of William’s successful invasion and in-
tentions, as is usually claimed. Mit anderen Worten, it was a cause, not a
consequence, of the 1688 Revolution.

Yet James’ links with his French idol were undoubtedly close.
Pincus even speculates that they might have had an alliance, or at
least some kind of agreement, though no conclusive evidence ap-
pears to exist (321–322). One possible reason was to advance
James’ dreams of founding an English seaborne empire; Pincus
makes the remarkable claim that James “hoped to divide up the
world” with Louis XIV (319). The abundant material about atti-
tudes to foreign policy in England (Kapitel 11) reveals the extent
to which James’ inclinations and political opinion were pulling in
different directions. Its conclusions will need to be incorporated
into future accounts.

Pincus is aware that he must account for the sudden collapse
of the Stuart regime after William’s army landed at Tor Bay, gegeben
his claims about the success of James’ administration and the
strength of his modern army (30,000 soldiers), which somehow
melted away in the ªrst, and last, successful invasion of England
seit 1066. One well-placed contemporary observed that, by the
time the royal army assembled at Salisbury, the rank and ªle were
demoralized and alienated, believing that if James were victori-
ous,”‘he intended to destroy the Protestant Religion and espe-
cially the Church of England.’”24 Whereas other scholars identi-
ªed religion as a major political inºuence, Pincus suggests that

24 Francis Gwyn, cited by Beddard, “Unexpected Whig Revolution,”12.

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242 | HAMISH SCOTT

James’ forces crumbled because of the withdrawal of popular sup-
port for the government and the military (226).

Once more, Pincus’ belief in England’s modernity appears
to lead him astray: Hereditary monarchies did not stand or fall on
the same conditions as modern governments do; approval and re-
sistance took place on a different plane, with vastly different dy-
namics. In this regard, Pincus ignores the additional explanation,
well established in previous accounts, that the easy defeat of the
Stuart monarchy owed something to James’ psychological state in
spät 1688, particularly after he joined the army at Salisbury on No-
vember 19.25 Despite his three decades of military experience—
including service with Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, vicomte de
Turenne—he panicked when confronted with a Dutch invasion
force decidedly smaller than his own army. James’ frequent nose-
bleeds conªned him to his room for two days, and he needed
opium to sleep. Unable to provide direction or leadership, he ªn-
ally ordered a retreat. In Carlton’s words, James was “rushing
hither and thither like a demented corporal, ordering, counterord-
ering, and disordering.”26 Before ºeeing the country, he threw the
Great Seal into the Thames, thereby easing William III’s triumph.
No doubt, the inºuence that generations of previous scholars con-
ferred upon personal factors is old-fashioned; these days, Historiker
tend toward more profound causal explanations. But in this case, Es
is difªcult to avoid the conclusion that James facilitated his own
demise.

Pincus’ study shows enormous energy and talent; the information
is abundant, and often genuinely new. Noch, the frequently shrill
rendition of his case, though comprehensible as a literary tactic, Ist
nicht, in the end, defensible. Letzten Endes, his re-interpretation fails to
convince on almost every count. Readers are likely to come away
suspecting that England’s “First Modern Revolution” was con-
structed not in England and The Hague but on Pincus’ writing
table.

See F. C. Turner, James II (London, 1948), 428–455; John Miller, James II: A Study in

25
Kingship (Hove, 1977), 188–209.
26 Charles Carlton, “Three British Revolutions and the Personality of Kingship," In
Pocock (Hrsg.), Three British Revolutions: 1641, 1688, 1776 (Princeton, 1980), 165–208 (quotation
An 197).

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