0 - Introduction to Parliament

Link: Introduction to Parliament

Episode Transcript

Abram: Welcome to Prime Factors. My name is Abram. This is a new podcast where my dad and I learn about British Prime Ministers from Robert Walpole to Rishi Sunak. This is Episode 0: "Introduction to Parliamentary Democracy".

Joe: Abram and I are huge fans of Totalus Rankium. That podcast features Rob and Jamie, two British guys meandering their way through American presidential history. What better way to honor them than having two Americans completely botch a look at British history?

Thanks for joining us at the start of our adventure. We recorded our first episodes in our dining room, and we weren't sure whether we'd even release them. But we did, and we've grown, and it's all been very exciting. Some of these early episodes are a little rougher around the edges. Feel free to jump ahead. You can find us on BlueSky at @PrimeFactorsPodcast. And at www.PrimeFactorsPodcast.com. Back to our younger selves, recording for the very first time.

We're going to start off with a bonus episode. Abram already knows a ton of British history. Abram, who was king in 1206?

Abram: That was King John.

Joe: Before we begin, would you like to explain our ranking system?

Abram: You can get 0 to 40 points in how much was accomplished and how much people liked you. You can get up to minus 40 points in... How much was unaccomplished and how much you are disliked. You can get 4 to 9 points in how long you lived in decades. You can get 0 to 20 points in how long you were in charge. And we have how interesting their picture portrait was and how interesting their life was.

Joe: And then what happens if they are really excellent?

Abram: "Known or Ice Cream Cone!" Because if you're Known, that means you're probably a good leader. But if you're not Known, you are an ice cream cone, because ice cream cones are like the part of ice cream that isn't as good. And like, so that's the ranking system.

Joe: "Known or Ice Cream Cone!" Honestly, we're going to be the only history podcast in the world to use that specific rating systems. We're going to begin at the absolute beginning, which is the Anglo-Saxon period, which is well before the Magna Carta.

Abram: Yeah, it's like 700. Compared to 1200, I think.

Joe: Correct. 700s compared to 1200s, although before 700s. So from the fall of Roman Britain up until the Norman conquest in 1066, that's the Anglo-Saxon period. During that period, they had a group of people that the king could turn to for support. And that was called the Witan. At least some parliamentary scholars like to cite that the Witan is one of the early inspirations for the Magna Carta, and therefore, one of the early inspirations for the. Parliamentary system. Exactly how true that is, I don't know.

The word Witan basically was an old English term for wise men, and this wasn't really a formal group. It wasn't an elected group. It was a whole bunch of earls, which were higher nobles, thanes, which were lesser nobles, abbots and bishops. So even very early on, they had the church being heavily involved in the British system, depending on what was going on at the time, different people would be invited by the king to participate. And the Witan had a couple of roles:

First, they consented to new laws. They could act as a supreme court for the kingdom. They could do things like land grants. But the big one is that they had some control over selecting the new king. There's a couple of examples of that. So in 955, King Eadred died and the Witan had to negotiate between two nephews. There was no great line of succession. This was before primogeniture. So they basically gave half of England, Wessex and southern England, to Edwig, and then they gave the rest to Edgar. But then Edgar got the whole thing in 959 when Edwig died. So basically, they kept the kingdom from going into civil war by dividing it up.

Abram: It's basically like civil war without the war part.

Joe: I think it was avoiding a civil war. In 1014, after the death of Sweyn Forkbeard, the Witan asked Athelred the Unready-- you know him, right?

Abram: Yeah, he's famous for being terrible. And like this is a quote from Horrible Histories: All of the Viking attacks he was definitely not ready for.

Joe: "Athelred the Unready" really means "Athelred the Unwise", but he certainly wasn't ready for the Vikings. The Witan negotiated with Athelred and offered to let him come back to England if he would just agree to rule a little bit more justly. I don't know how well that went, but they did it.

In 1018, there was something called the Council of Oxford. King Canute established a Witan that included both Danish and English representation. And they confirmed the laws that the kingdom would be used to govern by.

And way back at the end, like the last really important thing that the Witan did was in 1066. In 1066, Edward the Confessor was dead and the Witan had to judge between several potential rivals for who should have the English. Throne: Harold Godwinson, he claimed that Edward had nominated him on his deathbed. William of Normandy had claimed that Edward told him a secret promise that he would be the next king. 

Abram: I think that's William the Conqueror.

Joe: It is William the Conqueror!

And Harold Hardrada of Norway, all who believed that they had a claim. And so the Witan, of course, decided Harold Godwinson. Edgar Atheling also had a claim, but he was only 15 at the time and with a whole bunch of bloodthirsty Normans and Norwegians on the way, having a 15 year old king didn't seem like a good idea at the time. The Witan basically got to decide that Harold Godwinson should be king. And therefore they got to decide that 1066 was going to happen because there was really no other choice.

Abram: Basically, it's like Parliament deciding that the United Kingdom should be conquered by France.

Joe: I don't think they did that on purpose. I think that's kind of how it worked, though. With the destruction of Anglo-Saxon England, the Witan ended, no more Witan. And now we are under William the Conqueror. William the Conqueror brought the Norman system of feudalism to England.

Feudalism believed in a strict hierarchy from the king down to the nobles. It was kind of like an org chart, like the way companies are managed. William had something called a curia regis. That's a king's court that was used to advise the monarch, but this was just a group of people that he wanted to bring together. It had no powers outside the king. It just helped him to rule. Unlike the rulers of the Anglo-Saxon period, he considered himself really an absolute ruler. From there, as you know, we go from William, William, Henry, Stephen, Henry, Richard...

Abram: John!

Joe: John, right. And during this period of the Normans, absolute power reigned. Those kings had successes, they had failures. There was no Witan. And so therefore there was no one to really to resolve the succession crisis between Stephen and Matilda. And that led to the first of many English civil wars. Do you remember when King Stephen reigned?

Abram: I think 1135 to 54.

Joe: Very good. In 1215, we had something called the First Barons' War. This was led by a guy named Robert FitzWalter. And this was caused by John being a bit of a moron.

Abram: You may know John as the Robin Hood villain.

Joe: Yes, he is the Robin Hood villain, although this is a couple of years after Robin Hood. Because during the Robin Hood stories, John was still Prince John.

Abram: It was 1180s and 1190s. This is 1215.

Joe: Right. John basically screwed up. The Angevin Empire had collapsed. Do you know what the Angevin Empire is?

Abram: It's like an empire of England and France.

Joe: Controlled by the Normans and up through this period. But John kind of screwed that up. He wasn't a very good ruler in that he lost basically almost all, but not all, of the Angevin territory in France. This led to a big war with the Barons who really didn't like him. And he was forced to sign kind of like a peace treaty with the Barons in June 15th, 1215. This deal called the Magna Carta was signed near Windsor. It basically ended the war in favor of giving some power to the Barons. Now, John wasn't a good king. He immediately went back on just about everything that he said,  but that document is going to be kind of like the keystone of British history and British constitutional democracy.

There are a couple of important clauses in the Magna Carta that I think are pretty interesting. Clause 12, it says, "No scutage nor aid may be levied in our kingdom without its general consent." Those are fancy words, but they're saying you can't tax us unless we agree. Which is, of course, a very important point for the remainder of the British system. Clause 14 called for a common council, including nobles and church leaders. Kind of similar to what was in the Wittan, but it listed a group of people that had to be included whether the king wanted them or not. In those previous councils that William, William, Henry, Stephen, Henry, Richard, and John could call, the king could decide who he wanted to invite. But here, there was now a group that had to be invited. Clause 39 said, "No freemen shall be taken or imprisoned or outlawed or exiled or in any way ruined. Nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers." Which means that you can't punish them. You can't punish somebody just because you want. There has to be a reason to punish them.

Abram: That makes a lot of sense.

Joe: It does make a lot of sense. And Clause 61 established that there was a new special group of 25 barons who had the ability to meet and even overrule the king if he didn't follow the Magna Carta. That was removed later. But it was a pretty big step to saying something a little bit like a group of lords that would have a little bit more control over the king's actions.

Abram: I think that eventually became the House of Lords, right?

Joe: We have some twists and turns in this story. But like...

Abram: It sort of meandered its way to eventually get there.

Joe: Yeah, I think so. I think we'll get there. And we'll get there pretty soon actually. In 1217, John wasn't king, was he?

Abram: No, he died the previous year.

Joe: So who was king?

Abram: Henry III.

Joe: Right. So with Henry III, he signed Magna Carta again as part of a treaty to sort of end a war that had been going on with the barons. And then he continued to use it: He signed it again in 1225 as part of an agreement to levy new taxes in order to further his military goals and ambitions, whatever those happened to be.

The Magna Carta didn't create Parliament, but the legal foundations that the Magna Carta brought is really the beginnings of this idea of British parliamentary democracy. The simplest explanation for this is I actually found it on the UK government website. And it says, "Nobody set out to create Parliament. It developed naturally out of the daily political needs of the English king and his government. Nor did it develop continuously over time, but went through short periods of rapid growth."

The Magna Carta was kind of like the very first of those times. One of the most important parliaments that came up in England is during what they called the Second Barons' War. So that First Barons' War was really about the barons not really liking King John. But the Second Barons' War was against Henry III. During this war, a guy by the name of Simon de Montfort ended up taking a decent amount of political control away from Henry. And Simon de Montfort actually called his own Parliament.

The details of this war and all this other stuff is a little bit more complicated than I want to go into, but he called this Parliament, and it had something that was different from all of the other parliaments that had been called by Henry up to this point: they invited common people. Henry III had a whole bunch of little parliaments, pretty much starting in 1237 and continuing onward. And each of those, he would ask for taxes. Parliament would levy some grievances; They would have a discussion; They'd come to some conclusion. Each of those times was really about the nobles. But Simon de Montfort, when he did his Parliament, he included commoners as well.

That was a bit of a one-off. But in 1295, a very important Parliament happened. And this was under King Edward I. And this Parliament was so important, they now call it the Model Parliament. In this Model Parliament, they basically codified the idea that Parliament would have both a group of lords and church people, as well as a group of commoners. And this was because King Edward I said, and I think this is really important, "what touches all should be approved by all." The idea is that Parliament, if they're making laws for everybody, should have some representation from everybody. And in that Model Parliament, there were 49 lords in attendance and 292 commoners. Unlike what would come later, there was no division between the House of Lords and the House of Commons, they all just sort of met together. But they came together for the first time in something that you could recognizably see as the modern British Parliament.

This Parliament was composed of two knights from each county, two citizens from each city, and two burgesses from each borough, in addition to lords and abbots and nobles and other things. The way they were selected wasn't really democratic. Maybe a mayor selected them, maybe a noble selected them. But the idea is still the same. That there were representatives from real people that were finally participating in government.

As we continued through the history of Parliament, during the Hundred Years' War under Edward III, he started really the tradition of calling Parliaments annually. So up to this point, a king would just call a Parliament whenever the heck he wanted. Like, I need more money, let's call a Parliament. Oftentimes they might avoid calling a Parliament, because maybe they could be more a problem than they're worth, right? But King Edward III really decided that he needed more money. He needed money a lot, so let's call them once a year. But in 1327, Parliament deposed King Edward II in favor of his son, King Edward III, due to failures in leadership. Basically, Edward II had been fighting against the Scots...

Abram: And everyone hated him, even in England?

Joe: Even in England.

Abram: Yeah, I've also heard that his wife hated him, which would not be good.

Joe: I'd feel bad for him if his wife hated him. But apparently everyone hated him. And importantly for this podcast, Parliament hated him. And they did something that Parliament had never done before, which was they effectively kicked out the monarch. They said, Edward II, out. Your son, Edward III, is now going to be king. It would not be the last time that Parliament decided to get into the business of who should be king, as you probably know.

As we go ahead in history, Parliament gradually evolved. Sometimes they would meet with the Lords and the Commons together, but increasingly, the Lords would meet and the Commons would meet in two different places at two different times and they would have their own business.

During the reign of Edward III, he needed money. But instead of just responding to his request for money, that Parliament turned against the king and the corruption in the court. Two men were accused of robbing the treasury. One of them was the Warden of the Mint. You know what the Mint is? 

Abram: Doesn't it have to do stuff with, like, making the money?

Joe: The Mint makes the money. Two people were accused of robbing the treasury, including the Warden of the Mint. And this government, this Parliament, decided that they were going to try to clean house. You've called us for taxes. We're going to ignore you.

Abram: Which king is this again?

Joe: This is King Edward III, and this is called the Good Parliament in 1376.

Abram: Isn't that like the time that you said earlier that John of Gaunt, was basically ruling? And, like, everyone in the royal family seems to descend from him. Even the people who married into the Scottish line seem to descend from him.

Joe: Well, John of Gaunt is a super important guy. We don't have enough time to get into him now.

Abram: We were thinking that we could do a special episode of him.

Joe: Maybe we'll do a special episode about John of Gaunt, even though he's not a prime minister. John of Gaunt was very unhappy with this so-called Good Parliament of 1376. He arranged to stack the deck a little bit. He helped to decide who was going to be invited to the next Parliament. They called one in 1377. And do you want to know what they called that Parliament?

Abram: What?

Joe: The Bad Parliament. John of Gaunt didn't call it the Bad Parliament. I'm sure that he thought that one was the Good Parliament and the other one was the Bad Parliament. But nowadays, we have this concept of the Bad Parliament. They basically took everything that was done in 1376 and undid it all. In a way, this is like the beginning of political parties. It's like one political party in 1376 had control over the Parliament. They got their way, but John of Gaunt made sure that their opponents won the next one. And then they got their way. Not a great story, but it turns out that that Bad Parliament is the first one to have an official position called Speaker of the House of Commons.

At the end of King Edward's reign...

Abram: Which Edward III?

Joe: King Edward III.

Abram: Which is right around the Bad Parliament time, the same year, I think.

Joe: Yep. So right at the end of his reign, Parliament had to once again decide who was going to be king. Edward the Black Prince was his son. He was dying. Parliament basically helped decide the succession, figuring that Richard II, which was the Black Prince's son, should be the next one in line.

Abram: But he was like 10, right?

Joe: I don't know how old he was. That's good on you to know that. But I don't remember how old he was right now... [ checking ] Yeah, he was 10.

Abram: This isn't important to Parliament, but I know it, that like four years later, he drove rebels, I think, out of London at 14. And also he was crowned, I think, at fourteen. If we were Totalis Rankium, we'd circle him. [ Dad Note: He was crowned at 10. ]

Joe: Probably true. I think we would circle him. You want to do the podcast next time? No. Because you're pretty good at this.

Abram: No, no, you can do it.

Joe: I'll do it this time. Maybe you'll do the next one. Ever since the good Parliament, the MPs had a new tool in their arsenal that they could use. And this is called impeachment. And so they were able to impeach the Warden of the Mint and others. And that increasingly Parliament dealt with the corruption of the regime through the use of this impeachment power. And this culminated in 1388, during the reign of Richard II, when the Merciless Parliament formed. All these names, by the way, these are names that people came up with later.

They didn't call themselves the Merciless Parliament. They just called themselves Parliament. And now we call it the Merciless Parliament. In this Parliament, they hated Richard II's friends and his advisors and the people who were his favorites that he was giving money to and land to. And really, they did not like it.

Abram: By the way, this isn't just them disliking him. He's often considered one of the worst English rulers, too. Also being called, like, a 20- or 30-year old child, based off of tantrums and stuff.

Joe: Richard II had a very interesting relationship with the divine right of kings. And I think his reputation has certainly not been helped by Shakespeare, whose Richard II is a pretty fun play. Regardless, Parliament basically exiled some of his friends. They even accused some of them of sedition and managed to execute some of his friends. Parliament increasingly was not just listening to the king; Parliament was sort of fighting back against the king and working as a check against the powers of the king. This continued until 1399. Do you know what happened in 1399?

Abram: A person who we just circled-- Henry IV-- deposed Richard II.

Joe: Well, that's right. Henry IV did. But Henry IV didn't do that on his own. He had the help of Parliament to basically depose Richard II, force him to abdicate and bringing Henry IV to the throne. This is yet another time when Parliament is having a pretty outsized influence on the succession.

There's a lot to say about the next kings. And they all continue to evolve Parliament through taxation and a certain quid pro quo of, we don't like this. Help us with this and we'll give you money. Right? You know, the usual things. The next time they really got involved with this idea of kingship, was in 1484. Who was king in 1484?

Abram: Richard III.

Joe: Richard III. And he passed something through Parliament called the Titulus Regius, an act that retroactively made Edward V illegitimate. So no longer eligible to be king. 

Abram: Wasn't he already disappeared at that time?

Joe: I think he was in the tower at that point... But just for safekeeping, mind you. I mean, nothing bad could happen to those princes, right? Yeah.

Abram: It's unknown what happened to them. It is said that either Richard sent people to kill them or he killed them himself.

Joe: One of those. You know, once again, we have a great Shakespeare play, Richard III, that kind of delves into some of those details.

Abram: And it has the whole horse thing at the end.

Joe: Yep. But this is the case where Parliament didn't really succeed. So even though Richard III was working with Parliament to make himself a legitimate king, it did not stop the future Henry VII from bringing his big army diplomacy to England.

Abram: Yeah. Bigger army diplomacy.

Joe: Bigger army diplomacy. Basically defeating Richard at the Battle of Bosworth Field, leaving Richard to eventually be stuck in a parking lot. That's a little embarrassing for a king, honestly.

Abram: And just saying it's not that they trapped him in there. He was dead already.

Joe: He was dead already. He was actually buried in an abbey. The abbey closed down. The abbey closed down during Henry VIII and then eventually it was forgotten. Hundreds of years later, the spot where he was buried turned out to be a parking lot.

These things happen. In Britain, you probably can't throw a stone without hitting something that's ancient. At least that's my impression here as an American.

Abram: Yeah. And so now Henry VII is in charge. And if you don't know, you probably don't know he's the father of Henry VIII, because you need a seventh to get to an eighth. That's simple math.

Joe: These are things we learn in these podcasts, guys.

A lot more stuff with Parliament, we're just skipping our way through, because there's a lot of important stuff happening. But in 1529, something called the Reformation Parliament, that's the one that passed the bills that allowed Henry VIII to separate the Church of England from Catholicism.

Abram: Yes, with the churches.

Joe: And this is going to be really key for a while. In fact, the entire remainder of our story, up until the start of Robert Walpole, is going to be, at least in part, about this division between Catholics and Protestants and Anglicans and the way that different factions in Parliament are seeing the world and what they want the world to be.

Henry VIII was obviously bringing Protestantism. Edward VI worked with Parliament to make it even more Protestant. But Mary I said, nope, I want to be Catholic again. And finally, Elizabeth I, she had something called the Religious Settlement, bringing a period of stability. It was Protestant, it wasn't excessively Protestant, but it did permanently enshrine the Anglican Church. I think the important thing to get into here is that, unlike the American system, where we have a very strict separation of church and state, the exact opposite is the case in the UK, where Parliament is very much getting into the ideas of religion and what you can believe and what you can't believe. Clearly something that our American founding fathers were thinking of, as they launched into their time on the stage.

With the death of Elizabeth I and the crowning of James I, or James VI, right?

Abram: Yeah, because of Scotland uniting.

Joe: Well, James came with a whole bunch of different expectations. He and his successors were really pushing on the divine right of kings. They didn't really believe in parliamentary authority. They didn't want to believe in Parliament. And so they spent a lot of time fighting. For example, in 1614, James I called a Parliament, which we now call the Addled Parliament, because they accomplished absolutely nothing. They refused to do anything for him and just shut him down.

In 1621, Parliament passed a law that asserted that they had rights that the crown could not take away, including and especially that they have the freedom to discuss and debate matters without the interference of the king. Parliament, under Charles I, continued to try to push against this heightened idea of the divine right by something called the Petition of Right, where they were reinforcing their control over taxation.

Parliament said: we control taxes. But Charles I really didn't care. And the fact that they needed to do this at all kind of indicates that parliamentary power was backsliding and it continued to backslide until the following year, 1629, when Charles just up and dissolved Parliament. He arrested several members. People that didn't listen to him in Parliament were punished. Charles I really thought that Parliament needed to listen to him and not he listen to Parliament.

Abram: He's the king after all.

Joe: He is the king, and he thought himself as the king. He managed to hold off calling any more Parliaments for 11 years. But finally in 1640, there was a rebellion in Scotland. He had no way to get money. He called something called today the Short Parliament. In 1640, we have the Short Parliament. This is called Short because he refused to allow Parliament to debate anything or talk about anything that wasn't them giving him money.

Parliament wasn't happy. They weren't happy that they hadn't been called in 11 years. They weren't happy that they couldn't talk about anything. All they could talk about was the money that he wanted, and they were quickly dissolved. But the next Parliament is called the Long Parliament. So we have this Good Parliament, then the Bad Parliament. We have the Short Parliament, and then the Long Parliament. But exactly why this is called the Long Parliament is a little bit confusing. So let me go over it. The Parliament started, and they basically didn't want to let go. This led, thanks to the tyranny they might say, of Charles I, to the English Civil War in 1642, and eventually the execution of Charles in 1649. So during this whole period, Parliament refused to sort of give up. They refused to let go. They simply were holding session against the king. But even then, they didn't disband.

In 1648, so before Charles was tried, Parliament kicked out all of their royalist members. So everybody that supported Charles...

Abram: No more cavaliers allowed!

Joe: They got kicked out. So now the rest of this Parliament is called the Rump Parliament. I guess rump like your butt, or rump like I don't know why it's called the Rump Parliament, but it's called the Rump Parliament. And this group was the one that went ahead and, well, they showed Charles who was in charge after all.

After that, Cromwell came, and there was something called the Barebone's Parliament in 1653. There were protectorate parliaments under Cromwell. But in some ways, these parliaments don't entirely count. It's sort of a weird thing that when the Cromwell government eventually fell, after Oliver and his son, you like to mention his son, right?

Abram: Yeah, so Richard Cromwell, he really wasn't good at leading, and so Parliament kicked him out. I'm a bit surprised Dad didn't mention that. And that's the reason why the little restoration happened.

Joe: I have a whole bunch of notes. It's very hard to mention everything. But the important thing is that in 1659, the Long Parliament, which had never officially disbanded, even though there were other parliaments, the Bare Bones Parliament, the protectorate parliaments, and stuff in the middle, the Long Parliament said, oh, we're still here. We never officially disbanded. They allowed back in the royalists. They called for a new parliament that's called the Convention Parliament. That was in 1660. And they reinstated the monarchy under Charles II. And what do we know about Charles II? He liked to party. He likes to party. That has nothing to do with parliamentary democracy, but

Abram: It's from horrible histories at least.

Joe: Everything that is good to know about British history, you can learn in Horrible Histories. Good news is we're only 40 years away from Walpole. We're almost there.

Abram: And we're only 14 years or like 16 years from when he was born.

Joe: So Charles II had something called the exclusion crisis. He was a king that had no heirs. And his brother James was the presumptive heir. He was the next person in line. But James had a little bit of a problem. That problem was that James was secretly or maybe not so secretly Catholic.

Abram: And Catholic approval ratings weren't that good. He's still splitting the churches thing happened under Henry VIII.

Joe: That's true. So essentially parliament had passed a law in 1673 that said that everybody in the country had to say that the Catholics were awful people. It's not exactly what the law said, but it was more than or less what the law said. As a result, it was discovered that the future James II had actually converted to Catholicism in 1668. So he was a Catholic and the people knew he was a Catholic. This led to a major political crisis. So Charles was officially Protestant.

By the way, Charles is going to officially change to Catholic on his last day when he's about to die. He's like, I'm going to die. I'm Catholic now. 

Abram: He was only like that for like a few hours.

Joe: Charles had no heirs. His brother James was the heir presumptive.

Abram: But he was Catholic.

Joe: But he was Catholic. 

Abram: He was king for a little while, but not that long. I think he was exiled and protected by Louis XIV.

Joe: You're getting so ahead of me. So what parliament tried to do is they tried to pass laws that would prevent James from being king. They attempted to pass laws. There were three such laws in 1679 and in 1681, but none of them passed. But the groups of people that were passing this laws are kind of familiar, or at least they'll be pretty familiar by the time we get there.

There was one group called the Tories. The word Tory comes from the Irish word, "Tóraidhe." I can't pronounce Irish. I apologize. That just means an outlaw or a robber. They were in favor of keeping things as is. They were in favor of allowing James to become king and potentially risking another Catholic ruler.

Abram: So do we like them? I think for now, they're okay. 

Joe: It was a long time ago. Probably both parties believed in things that we don't want to really acknowledge. But we'll go for that. 

Abram: But for now, they're good because they want to allow more people to be king. And I assume, well, it might not mean, but it might end up meaning, that they don't exclude people.

Joe: Yeah, it's kind of tricky because we as Americans are thinking freedom of religion and that it's inherently good to not discriminate against somebody because they were Catholic. I think that's definitely still true.

We had the Tories. The other side was this group called the Whigs. And actually they were the country party. They came from the Scottish word, Whigamore, which was a type of Scottish word for cattle driver. And they wanted to prevent James from becoming king and keep Protestantism and Anglicanism in power and have generally a stronger parliament.

We had the Tories, kind of okay with Catholics, kind of okay with stronger kings. The Whigs, really pro-Protestant, pro-Anglicanism, but really wanted to maintain the control of parliament. I should mention that both of those names were originally insults that the others said to them, but they both said, yes, I will take that name. Because it sounds good? I really don't know why.

Abram: Yeah, and the Whigs here are different from the American Whigs that were around in the early 1800s.

Joe: Yeah, I'm sure they're probably related to the American Whigs in some way. 

Abram: Let's just presume.

Joe: We'll get there. Protestants in the country were very distrustful of Charles.

By the way, there was a secret treaty in 1670 called the Treaty of Dover, where Charles agreed to make the country more Catholic. Even though Charles didn't convert to Catholicism, he was citing an agreement with France that said that he would make it more Catholic, but they didn't know all that much at the time.

From 1678 to 1681, there was something called the Popish Plot, which was a group of people that were just very much nervous about Catholics and saying lots of not nice things about them. Basically, the entire country was just very fearful of Catholics. It was getting very bad. And Charles basically saw the world and the Whigs, so this new party, the Whigs, as being a little bit of traitors. And he even tried to start moving against them. And this led Parliament to pass something called the Habeas Corpus Act in 1689  that would protect people from arbitrary imprisonment. [Joe note: This was 1679.] I don't know how well it worked against Charles, but it must have worked somehow.

All of this didn't matter because in 1685, what happened?

Abram: Dead Charles.

Joe: Charles died. And despite everyone's best efforts, James II was crowned King, a Catholic King, on the throne of England. So just to provide some context, right? So James II had grown up Protestant.

Abram: He's James II and VII. Remember that? James II and James VII.

Joe: Yes, Scotland exists. I'm sorry, Scotland. So James grew up Protestant but converted to Catholicism in 1668. Despite Charles II having secret Protestant sympathies and James II being very explicitly Catholic, he had two kids, both daughters.

Abram: Oh, he has a third kid and that sort of turned into the Jacobite thing, which will be important in, I think, our third Prime Minister, but isn't right now.

Joe: You are so good at this. You're getting ahead of me already. Mary, his first daughter, married William of Orange from the Netherlands. And Anne married Prince George of Denmark, who presumably was from Denmark.

And so this was done, even though Charles was Catholic, or Charles was probably secretly Catholic. James was less secretly Catholic. And it ensured that those two women in the line of succession would be Protestant. So Parliament mostly was okay with this. Like, it doesn't matter that James is King. He's 52 already. He's going to die soon. He doesn't have any other kids. Whoever the next ruler is going to be is definitely going to be Protestant. We don't need to worry about it so much.

He did a whole bunch of stuff that upset Parliament still. So for example, in 1687, he passed a royal decree called the Declaration of Indulgence, which bypassed Parliament and made being Catholic legal again. Parliament was refusing to pass laws that would make the country more Catholic. He just said, fine, I'll just issue it by royal decree. Didn't matter. As soon as we get to Mary, it's going to be fine. There's going to be a Protestant on the throne. But what happened in 1688?

Abram: The Glorious Revolution and the old exile thing, I think, that I already mentioned, but I'm not sure if that was 1689.

Joe: Well, in 1688, something happened first before the Glorious Revolution, and that is James was born, called James Stuart. He was a new son of James II. And suddenly, what happens when a son is born? 

Abram: He was now in line to be king.

Joe: He was now first in line to be king! And guess what religion he was?

Abram: Catholic.

Joe: Catholic. Now suddenly, instead of having a secure Protestant succession, he has another kid. We have a Catholic on the throne, potentially forever. This led to a group in Parliament, led by the Whigs, to reach out to William and Mary and ask them to come and defend the Protestant faith. In reality, this was really complicated, because the Dutch were at war with the French, and if James II allied with the French, then maybe they would have invaded the Netherlands, right? It's a mess.

Abram: And then William would have to go back to the Netherlands to fight, so it was a little messy.

Joe: In 1688, as you've already said, the Glorious Revolution, William led an army to England, and he said "Therefore we have thought fit to go over to England and to carry over with us a force sufficient by the blessing of God to defend us from the violence of those evil counsellors. This, our expedition, is intended for no other design but to have a free and lawful Parliament assembled as soon as possible."

James was not really working with Parliament so they needed to do something very severe: Let's just invade England.

James's army wasn't that interested in fighting for him. He wasn't a very popular guy. William came in and pretty much everybody surrendered without a fight. In 1689, the Convention Parliament was called which codified that James, who fled England because there was a giant army there, that he didn't "flee". He "abdicated", so he's not king anymore. So who's king? Oh, William and Mary are king and queen now. Congratulations, William and Mary. You are now Mary II, and you are now William III.

Abram: Because they got to be co-rulers.

Joe: They got to be co-rulers.

Abram: For five years.

Joe: Until?

Abram: Mary died.

Joe: Yeah, that is sad. 

Abram: Poor Anne didn't get to become queen immediately.

Joe: Yeah. James is going to try to retake England in 1690. And then there's, as you've already said, there's going to be some Jacobites that come. And we'll get there. So, but as part of the 1689 Convention, they also passed something that you might have heard of, but not the British one. The Bill of Rights. And so Parliament passed a Bill of Rights that said, one, Parliament is superior to the monarchy. The monarch could not create laws. The monarch could not refuse to enforce laws. The monarch cannot raise taxes or call an army without Parliament's support. Sounds pretty familiar, huh?

Abram: Uh-huh.

Joe: Parliament has to be called regularly. You can't refuse to call them. A monarch cannot avoid working with Parliament just by not calling them. All the MPs have freedom of speech within Parliament. In the US, we have something very similar called the Speech and Debate Clause. And they allowed for the freedom to bear arms. So this is kind of a big thing in, you know, American political system right now. But under James II, Catholics were allowed to be armed, but not Protestants. So now everybody can be armed. Woo-hoo. That's great.

Abram: Resulting in more violence.

Joe: Of course.

It also said that you could not have cruel or unusual punishments. It said that there could be no more Catholic kings or queens. And that everyone is entitled to a trial by jury. So this is a very important moment in the history of Parliamentary democracy. And of course, the United States would follow up by having their own Bill of Rights about 100 years later. Do you remember when the Bill of Rights was signed?

Abram: I think like 95 years later. I think it was like 1787. But enough with American history. Continue with the British history!

Joe: Continue with the British history! 

Abram: Try not to give a million spoilers.

Joe: In 1689, we have the Toleration Act. Guess what? You can now be any religion that you want to be. Yay! As long as it's Protestant and not Catholic. But the Toleration Act made it so that you didn't have to be Anglican. You could be Lutheran or Calvinist or Methodist or whatever the other Protestant religions were at the time. In 1694, Parliament created the Bank of England, which is the foundation of the modern treasury of that country.

Abram: Yeah, and around that time, William became a solo ruler, right?

Joe: Yeah, then William became a solo ruler. Then William became a not ruler. 

Abram: Because he died from falling off his horse, I think.

Joe: I'm not sure why he died, but falling off a horse is as good as any reason, I suppose.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: Neither Mary nor Anne had any children. So at the end of Anne's life, the succession was once again in a crisis. Catholics could not be king, but there were known close relatives who were Protestants. The closest Protestant relative that they could find was Sophia of Hanover, the granddaughter of King James I. Parliament passed something called the Act of Settlement in 1701.

Abram: But wait, how many Acts of Settlement have there been?

Joe: Probably a lot.

Abram: Have you noticed that?

Joe: I have. It's a good word. I'm going to start calling dinner time every night our Act of Settlement. Is that okay?

Abram: No. Just continue.

Joe: An Act of Settlement was passed by Parliament in 1701, and it made Sophia of Hanover the next in line. But she didn't quite make it.

Abram: She died?

Joe: She died one month before Anne died. She never got to be queen. It would have been another female monarch that would have been cool.

On the other side, the closest relative that should have been king, if Catholics were allowed, was James Stuart, the son of James II. And he was also called the Old Pretender. And he's going to try to invade England in 1715 and 1745. But we'll get there later. Now, the Whigs of this period, they were in favor of the Hanover succession.

Abram: Yeah. The thing in 1745, just to be clear, is that thing I mentioned with the third episode about a prime minister. They'll have to deal with that. And I'm not saying who it is.

Joe: Oh, that's good. Because you've been reading ahead. So the Whigs of this period were in favor of the Hanoverian succession. And they were for more religious toleration of them in general, except, of course, unless you were Catholic. The Tories kind of would have preferred a Jacobite succession. Although even they also agreed to the Act of Settlement. It's a complicated situation. In 1707.

Abram: The Acts of Union, right?

Joe: The Acts of Union. Yes. That merged England and Scotland into Great Britain.

Abram: Yeah, trust me. I know King history a lot better. So once again to the prime ministers, I probably won't know it as well.

Joe: Well, that's okay. So in 1714, what happened?

Abram: Anne died. 

Joe: George I became king. But before that happened, something else happened that's important to us. In 1713, Robert Walpole became elected as the MP from King's Lynn, a town in Norfolk, England, about 100 miles, I think, northeast of London. And that's where we're going to stop because we'll pick up the rest of the history in the beginning of the Hanoverian succession. We start talking about Walpole next time!

Joe: That is it for our brief look at the history of Parliament. Abram, have you had fun?

Abram: Yep. I'm excited to do Walpole. We'll see you next time.

Joe: He's been begging and begging and begging for weeks. So next time out, Robert Walpole, the first regular episode. And I'd better get some research done because there's a lot of books about this guy. See you next time.