For Pitt and JA. Enjoy the link!

Maybe this will be a stop to all the pro-Williamite bleatings.

But probably not.
Just a question: how is “inviting” a force to invade your country and kill your countrymen NOT a treasonous act?
Why did William and Mary show so much contempt for those who were not Church of England?

Why did they (since they were both such stalwart,upstanding christians. ah hem.) encourage the most vile, contemptible propaganda against a very innocent women (Mary of Modena) and her baby?
I mean, it’s not like they were hypocrites or anything (sarcasm) what with Mary II having a history of hysterical pregnancies questioning the validity of her brother’s birth (witnesses by 67 persons!) And knowing the score with her own husband, who spent more time with his male “friends” than with her.
Wow, again, such stalwart models of christian virtue.

Oh, isn’t Williamite history grand?

Lots of movies are.

Pitt: They were all Lennox Stuarts, of the line of Mary Queen of Scots and Lord Darnley; hence all Catholic. The Elector was a Lutheran, and hence in communion with the Church whereof he became Supreme Governor.

Oh, they were much, MUCH closer relatives than that. Read up on the matter, Pitt.

They passed over Catholics because they were self-serving, arrogant bigots. Next.

They were all Lennox Stuarts, of the line of Mary Queen of Scots and Lord Darnley; hence all Catholic. The Elector was a Lutheran, and hence in communion with the Church whereof he became Supreme Governor.

Not to mention the fact of his notorious distaste for the religion Established by law, guaranteed by Apostolic tradition, and set forth by the English divines in Convocation. He had Irish in the Army, Catholics in the Ministry, and a huge standing army he refused to disband. By his contempt for the English Church and his trampling upon the free liberties of the subject, he alienated his rural Tory supporters, and finally crowned it all by abdicating the throne. (What else do you call desertion?) This AND his shameful treatment of Magdalen College inclined even his natural supporters to believe that he was attempting to restore Popery; something he promised he would not do.

I am a strong believer in the divine right of Kings. But advocating for the right of the Jacobite heir, the German-speaking Francis Wittelbach of Bavaria as King of England strikes me as faintly ridiculous; of the same ilk as George I of Hanover. Not to mention the fact that the Jacobite line renounced their claim to the English throne during the first world war, and to the Scottish and French thrones simply by not using the title. The last Stuart with an asserted claim was Henry IX, Cardinal Duke of York.

Her Majesty is Queen by blood succession from Elizabeth of Bohemia, she is Queen by Coronation and anointing by the Primate of All England, and she is Queen by acclamation and acceptance of her subjects; the three cornerstones of the Coronation Service.

English Church and English Queen, I say. Away with the speculations and Papistical notions of Jesuits and Jacobites, and let us acknowledge a real Queen; one without a French army.

Modern government (British) is in practice uncomfortably absolutist. It wasn’t about a hundred years ago. And it isn’t rhetorically. But I think it fairly bloody awful, if tolerable still. It is absolutist in that it acts, to paraphrase Reagan, as if it has people, rather than the people having a government. Which is partly the fault of what will be seen, historically (if we have any historians in the future; if indeed our civilisation has a future), as one of the weakest and most incompetent Royal Houses of all time. As Churchill said after WWII (in a really great essay called ‘The Dream’), the Monarchy then was more popular than in the time of Victoria.

Yet Elizabeth – though I venerate, honour and admire her, as my Monarch, still – either through personal haplesness or poor advice, or through being politically manipulated, entirely failed to capitalise on this popularity and reassert a prominent role for the Monarchy in the running of the country. Instead of redoubling her hold of the reins, she let what was left of them in her hands slip silently away.

It is one of many chapters in the sad story of the decline of Britain – and, if not it’s fall, then at least it’s radical and apparently irreversible transformation. There are outposts of Britannia left. St Andrew’s seems to be one of them. But not many.

Jacobite – you do a funny thing, putting a rather extreme, Catholic (but not unheard-of) spin on William of Orange and the Protestant movement in Britain. Rather like calling the Reformation a brutal, extremist, thuggish revolution undertaken by elites from above rather than the people below. I mean, yes, you can say that (and with the Reformation, kind-of, sort-of, make a good-ish point, but still fail to characterise it accurately). But yours is a rather unseemly, grievance-mongering, uncharitable spin; referring to something as ‘religious oppression’, which less than 1% of people ever have done or would or did at the time.

It’s anyway incorrect, because the Anglicans of Parliament and William of Orange were not oppressing religious freedom but securing civil stability, promoting harmonisation rather than factionalism in the population, and operating from a purely mercenary political perspective. What could best bind the people together, what could best prevent societal fragmentation upon hostile lines, what could most ably prevent foreign and internal would-be usurpers from establishing a base of support? Knitting the people as best as possible into one religious fabric – one which actually harmonised perfectly the Reformation with Catholicism, removing the abuses and heresies of the latter, but cooling the zealotry of the former – so that all are hearing the same kind of thing from the pulpit each week, and fundamental differences between large numbers of people were not exacerbated. As Macaulay said, all freedoms should be allowed unless their exercise imperils or infracts upon the freedom or future freedom of fellow men.

And even if later on the Parliament had chosen a small dog for King, rather than George, I cannot understand how that would invalidate their arguments for getting rid of James II. Could you try and be less obtuse? And slightly less rude?