Projects and Undertakings Beyond My Reach

The final withdrawal of James was followed by heart-searching throughout the nation, with anxious negotiations within doors and vehement discussion without. Few doubted that effective power must pass into William’s hands, but on what terms? The constitutional crisis forced men to examine the basic principles of their political beliefs. The Tory theory of divine right by inheritance left no room for a political vacuum. Either James was still king, or else he could be considered to have abdicated. In that case, his infant son was king, unless, as it suited many Tories to believe, he was really a changeling. If that was so, then James’s elder daughter Mary reigned jure divino. In all this there was room for William only as Regent or Consort, roles he was most unlikely to accept. The Whig contractual theory of the state avoided all these difficulties; and Defoe for one had no hesitation in interpreting the situation as a return to the state of nature which had existed before civil government had come into being.