From: fledgist@weber.ucsd.edu (Fragano Ledgister)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.celtic,soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: The story of the Scottish flag
Date: 28 Dec 1992 23:17:21 GMT
Organization: University of California, San Diego
NNTP-Posting-Host: weber.ucsd.edu

In article <1992Dec28.045435.20320@newstand.syr.edu> crdunlea@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Christopher R. Dunlea) writes:
>In article <1hlurmINNg8l@network.ucsd.edu> fledgist@weber.ucsd.edu (Fragano Ledgister) writes:
>>
>>The Glorious Revolution was quite a bit more than a military
>>coup-cum-invasion. It produced both a change in the ruling coalition
>>(the Tories had been dominant from the Restoration until the
>>Revolution) and in the relative power of King and Parliament. The
>>Convention was in and of itself a revolutionary act, with
>>extraordinarily revolutionary consequences, of which the
>> succession of George I was one of the more significant (the
>>disappearance of print censorship was another, as was the
>>rehabilitation of many surviving Commonwealthsmen, Sir John Wildman
>>being a notable example).
>
>Yes, but the origins were a military coup, started by Churchill, and 
>Parliament acted only when William's Blue Guards had captured (yup) 
>London. When you examine the events of the times Parliament seems only
>to be accepting a fait accompli.


This is to reduce a historic event, the effects of which are felt to
this day, simply to its first cause. Would you go on to define the
Bolshevik Revolution as a semi-military coup? Or the French
Revolution as an aristocratic revolt?

A revolution is properly so called when it produces substantial
changes in either the economic, or the social, or the political
order, or in some combination of the above. An event which produces
such changes is more than its proximate cause.


>There were certainly some interesting results of the Rev. William walked
>a narrow line, in that he rehabilitated Puritans, but he also kept the 
>imperial edifice erected by James II. Note that the power of the army 
>had increased tremendously since 1640 (England now kept a standing army
>of 110,000 and a fleet of 300 ships, as opposed to 10,000 and 50 ships).
>William made an alliance with the Parliament and the results were the
>constitutional changes you mentioned.


And note that Parliament kept control of the army's purse-strings
(not to mention its very existence) thereafter through the annual
Mutiny Acts [general question to whoever may know: when exactly in
the 1960s was the Mutiny Act replaced?].

>
>>
>>The most important consequence was the acceptance, tacit but real,
>>of the idea that the subject had a _right_ to revolt against
>>tyrannical acts by the Crown. It is, after all, no coincidence that
>>the _Two Treatises_ were published in London in 1689. (For more on
>>this I recommend Richard Ashcraft's study of Locke's theory in the
>>context of its times -- the rather cumbersome title of which escapes
>>me at the moment).       
>>____________________________________________________________________
>Interesting thing about Locke--the father ofthe philosophies of the tabula 
>rasa and the political contract also penned the most repressive royal
>charter in American colonial history--South Carolina's, for James and
>his secretary, Samuel Pepys. The only charter I know of that made serfdom
>(yes, you read serfdom) a stated social position in the colony and which gave 
>the landholders noble titles. 


In addition to writing the _Constitution of Carolina_, Locke was a
shareholder in the Royal Africa Company, an enterprise which sought
to provide slave labour for the American plantations.

>I guess he tried to clear his name with the Two Treatises.

You might find the _Epistola de Tolerantia_, written while Locke was
in exile in Holland, rather interesting as well.

-- 
Dawn over the dark sea brings on the sun;                      
She leans across the hilltop: see, the light!
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