Declaration of Rights (1689)

The Declaration of Rights (1689), later called the Bill of Rights after it became law, set out central principles of the constitutional settlement following the Glorious Revolution. Its importance lay not in a fully specified code of enforceable rules, but in a transfer of political authority: Parliament could determine the succession and constrain royal power, while the monarch increasingly yielded practices that had sustained absolutist rule.

Revolution and constitutional settlement

After Parliament’s victory in the Glorious Revolution, it negotiated a new constitution with William of Orange. The settlement had been foreshadowed by William’s declaration before his invasion and was given institutional form in the Declaration of Rights, produced by Parliament in February 1689. Parliament read it to William at the same session in which it offered him the crown.

The document addressed the succession to the throne in a way that departed significantly from accepted hereditary principles. By demonstrating that Parliament could remove one monarch and offer the crown to another, it raised a lasting constitutional implication: royal succession was no longer wholly beyond parliamentary influence. The settlement made Parliament a participant in defining the terms of monarchy, not merely an institution that the monarch might consult or ignore.

Limits on royal authority

The declaration asserted that the monarch could not suspend or dispense with laws and reiterated that taxation required parliamentary consent. It also provided that England could not maintain a standing army without such consent. Together, these principles restricted the Crown’s ability to govern through unilateral legal exceptions, revenue demands, or military force.

Not every clause supplied a precise standard. Clause 8 declared that elections to Parliament ought to be free without defining what “free” meant. Clause 13 called for frequent Parliaments but did not specify how often they must meet. The declaration’s vagueness was consequential because constitutional language alone could not ensure compliance: under Charles II, a Triennial Act had required Parliament to be summoned at least once every three years, but Charles ignored it without penalty because no effective enforcement mechanism existed.

Parliament’s authority in practice

After 1688, Parliament did not create a special enforcement mechanism for the requirement that Parliaments meet frequently, as the barons had established a council after King John signed the Magna Carta. The political circumstances had changed: authority and decision-making power had shifted to Parliament. William gave up practices associated with earlier kings, including interference in legal decisions and claims to receive customs revenues for life. The changed distribution of power therefore gave constitutional principles force that the text’s imprecise wording could not supply on its own.

The result was the triumph of Parliament over the king and the end of absolutism in England, later Great Britain. After England and Scotland were united by the Act of Union in 1707, Parliament remained firmly in control of state policy. Its members had substantial interests in trade and industry, and consequently a stake in protecting property rights that Stuart rulers had frequently infringed. With control over public spending, Parliament was also more willing than the Stuarts had been to raise taxes for purposes it considered valuable, especially strengthening the navy to protect overseas mercantile interests.

Rule of law and unequal participation

The constitutional shift helped establish the rule of law: laws were not supposed to be applied selectively or arbitrarily, and no one stood above them. The contrast with the Stuart era was visible in later disputes over repression. In the Black Act prosecutions, even powerful Whig figures could not ensure a conviction when a jury found procedural irregularities; the acquittal of John Huntridge showed that common people accused of encroaching on private property still had a right to a fair trial. The new principle constrained elites as well as those they governed.

That constraint did not make the political system democratic. In the eighteenth century, fewer than 2 percent of the population could vote, and all voters had to be men. Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, and Sheffield, cities where the Industrial Revolution took place, lacked independent representation in Parliament, while rural areas were overrepresented. The settlement thus widened political access and made power more pluralistic without extending participation equally. Its significance was that constitutional limits could support a continuing demand for broader participation, even while the electorate remained narrow.