Abdicate’ and ‘Contract’ in the Glorious Revolution
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8959394 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Thomas P Slaughter (Princeton University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1981 |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 323-337 |
| Publication date | 1981-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Historical Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-246X • E-ISSN: 1469-5103 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0018246x00005495 |
| OpenAlex | W2129863034 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 16 |
| References cited | 10 |
A revisionist explanation of the political events of the Glorious Revolution has crept into recent literature virtually unscathed. Briefly summarized, the argument contends that it is difficult to discover evidence of resistance to the Crown in the debates of either the House of Lords or the Convention parliament during 1689. According to J. P. Kenyon, a major advocate of this new interpretation, John Locke's Second treatise of government misled historians and even some contemporaries into believing that parliament deposed James II for breaking the original contract between sovereign and people. Actually, during the long debates in and between both houses ‘it was clear that the word “abdicated”, or the Lords’ preferred choice, “deserted” both implied a voluntary act, if not a rational choice, on James's part’. The Lords especially, Kenyon argues, were careful to dissociate themselves from contract theory. Whig ‘revolution principles’, then, built upon the ‘haste and confusion of the occasion’ were rooted in a misunderstanding of actual events, a mis-understanding fostered by the writings of Locke and Algernon Sydney and enshrined as doctrine by whig politicians and historians
Argument (complex analysis · Convention · Doctrine · Government (linguistics · Interpretation (philosophy · Law and economics · Parliament · Political science · Politics · Resistance (ecology · Sociology · Sovereignty · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History · Law · Philosophy · Scottish History and National Identity
The Politics of Liberty in England and Revolutionary America
Scepticism, priestcraft, and toleration
Cameralism and the sciences of the state
Political languages of the French Revolution
Encyclopedias and the diffusion of knowledge
The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought
Social contract theory and its critics
The comparative study of regimes and societies
Hobbes’s and Locke’s Contract Theories
The History of British Political Thought
Doing No Wrong
The People, the Law, and the Constitution in Scotland and England
The Glorious Revolution
Abdicate’ and ‘Contract’ Restored
John Locke on the Glorious Revolution
Significant Silences in Locke's Two Treatises of Government
| Unique citing works | 16 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,36 |
| Citation span | 1982 - 2006 (25) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 16 |