The Times
December 11, 2002
300 years on, William still rules
commentary by michael gove
ENGLAND in 1697 was an exhausted nation, its financial, maritime and physical
strength sapped by nine years of war.
But the exertions of those years had bought a prize worth the hazard.
The Peace of Ryswick signed in September 1697 guaranteed those liberties
and institutions on which Britain’s greatness would be built.
The Nine Years’ War was fought between the most powerful nation
of the time — Louis XIV’s France — and a grand alliance
of England, Holland, Spain, Austria and various German states.
The Allies were fighting to contain the ambitions of Louis to exercise
even greater sway over Europe, but England’s fight was, in its way,
a war of independence.
England’s king at the beginning of 1688, when war clouds gathered,
was the Roman Catholic James II, who sympathised with Louis XIV. Both
James II, and his brother and predecessor, Charles II, were in hock to
the French Court as well as cavalier towards Parliament.
From the moment of his accession in 1685, James sought to undermine traditional
liberties and pack the major offices of State with his Catholic cronies.
James’s autocratic rule brought turmoil to England, and the crisis
of his reign was resolved only when the Dutch head of state, William of
Orange, landed in Torbay with a mission to uphold the rights of Parliament
and the freedoms of the English people.
The Army and people rallied to William’s side and he, along with
his wife, Mary, who was James’s daughter, were welcomed to the Throne.
Their accession, and the accompanying Declaration of Rights, put England’s
liberties on a surer footing.
But James, who had fled to France, was determined to reclaim his Throne.
Louis XIV backed James’s efforts as one front in his war of French
expansion and England had to fight to secure its reclaimed freedoms.
James launched his counter-attack through Ireland, and, after bloody fighting
— including the siege of Londonderry — he was eventually defeated
by William at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.
But England’s war did not end then, and was carried on against the
French Empire in the fields of Flanders, the forests of North America,
the islands of the Caribbean and, most importantly, at sea. The decisive
English naval victory was secured over the French fleet at La Hogue in
1692, but the land war itself dragged on until 1697.
The Treaty of Ryswick that concluded the conflict mattered to England
because Louis was compelled to recognise the legitimacy of William’s
rule and thus acknowledge that the French Court could no longer consider
the English Throne its plaything.
William’s rule mattered, and matters still, because it laid the
foundations for the nation’s achievements. He secured the ascendancy
of the Royal Navy at sea, on which Britain’s Empire and trading
strength were built. He guaranteed a balanced and stable constitution,
with the Declaration of Rights and the respect he showed to Parliament.
He presided over the financial revolution that launched Britain on the
path to prosperity, with the establishment of the Bank of England in 1694.
A little over 300 years later, Britain’s sailors have so little
ammunition they are reduced to shouting “Bang!” when on training
exercises, the right to trial by jury and the executive’s accountability
to Parliament are being dismantled, and the Government is committed to
the abolition of the Bank of England and the nation’s financial
independence. Perhaps our massive trade gap is not the only historic record
we should ponder.
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Alan Day
County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, UK
Webmaster
Ulster-Scots & Irish Unionist Resource
http://www.ulster-scots.co.uk
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