Political Troubles in England
In the summer of 1688, a crisis occurred. The king had ordered a declaration of indulgence to be read in all the churches. The order shocked the Protestant sentiment of England, and met with strenuous opposition. The Archbishop of Canterbury and six bishops were sent to the Tower on a charge of libel, because they ventured to petition the king against the order. This outrage shook English society to its foundations, with the most intense excitement. The prelates were acquitted, yet the excitement continued; and in obedience to what was undoubtedly the common wish of Protestant England, some of the leading peers and prelates of the realm invited Prince William of Orange to invade England and dethrone the Stuart. William was the husband of Princess Mary, the eldest daughter of King James, and both were Protestants.
William accepted the invitation, and on the 5th of November 1688, he landed at Torbay, with fifteen thousand troops. The friends of James all deserted him--even his daughter Anne, the wife of Prince George of Denmark. James fled to France, and William called a convention of the notables of England to settle the momentous questions of the future monarchy. In February, 1689, William and Mary were proclaimed joint monarchs of England, and their effigies, or profiles of their faces, were placed together on the coins of England. To this the couplet refers in speaking of lovers
Like William and Mary on a shilling."
The detested and detestable Stuart dynasty now disappeared forever, Higher political principles were diffused through English society. A declaration of the rights and liberties of the subject was made by the British Parliament at the accession of the new sovereigns; and from that time the people of the realm had a more direct and controlling participation in the administration of the public affairs of the realm, than even in the time of the Commonwealth and Cromwell. The salutary influence of that great change in the English government and policy upon the destinies of the English-American colonies was remarkable. From the period of that revolution, to the beginning of the French and Indian War at the middle of the eighteenth century, the history of Virginia is the story of the steady, quiet progress of an industrious people, who were ready in "the fullness of time" to join with other colonies in the establishment of a great republic.