‘The refiner of sugars goes through that operation in a month which our forefathers required four months to effect; thus the distillers draw more spirits, and in less time ... than those formerly did who taught them the art ... Tobacco is cut by engines instead of knives. Books are printed instead of written. Deal boards are sawn with a mill instead of men’s labour. Lead is smelted by wind furnaces instead of blowing with bellows.’20
This was not quite the industrial revolution – not yet. In most cases scientists vastly underestimated the technical challenges of hammering bright ideas into working machines. There would be a time-delay before innovation really delivered the productivity revolution – just as there would be a time-delay before the social changes of the 1690s resulted in egalitarian societies. But the conceptual breakthrough on which the Industrial Revolution depended was made at the time of the Glorious Revolution. Innovation could transform production; science and the economy could combine into a rising spiral of change. The dream of space travel was born with the telescope, not the rocket. Sir Robert Southwell proposed a canal network in 1685, even though it would be a century before it was constructed. The hope of an efficient transport system – so important to the Dutch economic miracle – was expressed in dozens of Private Acts for turnpike roads, harbour improvements and other infrastructure projects in the thirty years after the Revolution. The stock-market boom of the 1690s not only explored new possibilities in the culture of risk. It opened the door to a world of perpetual technological progress.
Revolutions in freedom, in knowledge and in risk – this was the triple legacy of 1688, and they would operate together to create a society quite unlike any other the world had seen. Toleration and schism created the freedom for new ideas to develop unhindered; freedom of information allowed them to circulate. Neither in politics – within a Europe of competing states and a Britain of competing interests – nor in religion, where a similar pattern had developed, were there powers unified enough to close the sluice-gates through which new ideas now flooded. And so the inventions of the Scientific Revolution, both conceptual and practical, would continue to develop. To foster them, new commercial structures arose based on risk and speculation. Unplanned by anyone, meanwhile, the post-revolution state turned out to have an entirely new character, creating a new relationship between state and individual. Bolstered by popular consent, empowered by its own experiments in risk, the new state, a precursor of modern democracies, would become more powerful than any of its predecessors, able to finance the military development which would build European empires. If the world we live in today is notable for its technological sophistication, for the extent and complexity of its trade and financial arrangements, for freedom of speech and opinion, for social mixing which has eroded class and gender barriers as in few previous societies, for its godlessness, for its furious cycle of fashion and change, for mass communications, for our devotion to leisure, for frivolity, for irreverence, and for wealth, then a new world was indeed born with the Glorious Revolution.
It was not the case, of course, that all these were inventions of 1688. The roots of the Scientific Revolution went back centuries; Christianity had already been thrown into turmoil by the Reformation; Newton established his Principia before, not after, the Prince of Orange set sail, while Christopher Columbus had discovered America two centuries earlier, using a tool, the celebrated compass, which had long been in European hands. Gunpowder was not new, nor was contract as a metaphor for government. What happened with the Revolution was the creation of a state (many of whose features were already visible in the Netherlands) which either fostered those changes or at the very least was unable to stop them. Intellectual and technological break-throughs had been made before, of course, but such periods of ferment had been followed by much longer periods of intellectual stagnation. Never before had intellectual and technological breakthrough become the modus operandi of an entire culture. John Locke had thought monarchy fit only for simple, static societies. Here at last was a political system suited to the dynamic world of the Moderns, one with the flexibility to absorb change and adapt to it. Louis XIV thought that expansionary kingship could provide such a model, but when it stopped expanding the French monarchy quickly stagnated. Dynamic and restless, the English system based on competition and limited power proved itself as fast-moving and ambitious as the growing world around it.
The result of 1688, in other words, was to jam open the valve which controlled change. The church in post-revolutionary England would never have the power to snuff out intellectual enquiry – much as some of its members would have liked to. A monopoly of thought had been decisively broken, and the religious and intellectual landscape after the Revolution was one of alternative and opposition. In politics, as well, the result of 1688 was to create a constitution in which power could never be monopolised. That was not the intention of the Revolution, nor did the result conform to any previous ideal. Just as toleration enshrined intellectual diversity, however, so the odd hybrid of post-revolutionary government ensured a plurality of power-centres, none of them able to dominate the others. So if the Glorious Revolution did open some doors to the new world, it would be as true to say that it prevented doors from being closed. It was that which made the Revolution a turning point. It was the moment at which disturbing possibilities became a state of permanent change.
Contemporaries recognised it as such – that was the significance of the dispute between Ancients and Moderns. The Moderns glimpsed a new era. They described themselves as leaving behind a closed, known world for uncharted waters. They contrasted the confined order of the old world with the limitless space into which they were sailing.
Three hundred years later we are still sailing through that space, still heading into uncharted waters, and we have become used to it. Perhaps that was the biggest single shift which occurred at the time of the Revolution. Most human societies have had no notion of progress. Change has normally been a symptom of disease, and stasis an aspiration. To assume change, to be certain that whatever pertains now will not continue, that our children will inevitably progress farther than we will – to celebrate all this, indeed – truly places us in a new world. The Revolution not only created that world, but provided the conceptual tools necessary to understand it. The culture of risk spoke of a new relationship with the future. Gambling, stock-dealing and insurance were all experiments in chance. Through them, men and women of a new age dangled a lead-line into the unknown to see how far it would reach. The future was wrested from God’s hands into mankind’s. It became calculable; it abounded in possibilities.
But also in risks. The path from the 1690s to our own world has certainly not been straight. The Revolution did not usher in a period of continuous progress, either socially, economically, intellectually or in the development of freedoms. The eighteenth century would see many pressures develop to combat the dangerous consequences of 1688. Political competition was slowed by the Whig supremacy. If there was a potential for democracy in the Revolution, then it was not worked out either quickly or easily – one hundred years later fewer had the vote than in 1689. If there were pressures towards social equality, then aristocrats proved adept at countering them. The decades after 1688 could be written, indeed, as a history of reactions to its possibilities.
Among such reactions, perhaps the most subtle of all was the Whig explanation of history which accepted that permanent change was taking place, but tamed it by insisting that change was predictable and could only be good. Change has never been predictable, nor virtuous in itself. It creates, but it also destroys, and the Revolution had many critics to lament the passing of the old. Our technological achievements may astonish – but they may also end by destroying us. It is too early to say whether the new world created by the Revolution is sustainable; or whether three brief centuries of freedom, science and commerce might be a brilliant coda to the human story.
Roger North’s instinct, the instinct for stability not change, certainty not fear,
would always be there to counter the dynamic world, and its scepticism and anxiety have always been as valid as the triumphalism of Whig or Modern. The urge towards progress and the contradictory instinct for stability have been the poles between which we have oscillated ever since 1688.
Roger North did not stay long in London after the Revolution. He withdrew to a long retirement at Rougham, where he took to planting trees on his estate – for generations afterwards his lime avenue would be known as North’s Folly. Much of his time he spent in his study, writing about his brothers and the England he had lost. He remembered the day he proclaimed King James II, and everything that happened because of it; the shifting times; the decade the world changed forever.
‘I have learnt that there is no condition like the private. I know the vanity and error of news and of vulgar opinion of things; I have no thirst after it. I have learnt the folly of projects; it is enough if I can govern my private economy. I could see the rottenness of men; those against the Government were mad, and those for it generally false. Neither one sort with their threats, nor the others with their flattery, ought to prevail over men to leave the strict justice of life. An Englishman hath nothing to lean on but the law, which only can or will bear him out.’21
One morning a few years after Mary’s death, William III left his apartments at Hampton Court and crossed the baroque gardens for a demonstration in the grounds. The contraption the King had been invited to inspect was quite unlike anything he had seen before. It appeared to have two chimneys, one square and brick, the other a tall and unsteady-looking pipe. Between them was a low brick shed, and next to that what looked like two huge iron eggs. Innumerable pipes wound their way over, under and around this monster, and from it came intense heat, clouds of steam, and a dangerous hiss suggesting contained pressure. One assistant threw shovelfuls of coal into a low door in the shed – the source of the black smoke belching from the chimney – while another nervously opened and shut a lever next to one of the eggs. A bucket to one side caught a small trickle of water of which the inventor, a military engineer called Thomas Savery, seemed inordinately proud.
Thomas Savery waxed lyrical about what his steam-powered engine could do: pump water from mines to allow minerals to be extracted far deeper, drive other machines, power ships against wind and tide so that they would not need sails. One day it would do all of these things, but it would take a hundred uncertain years to combine the various necessary breakthroughs in metallurgy, casting, in the design of furnaces and the calculation of pressures, which would together make this wheezing, simmering contraption an object of practical use. It would be a hundred years before the sound of steam engines filled English valleys. They would only do so because finance was available to fund development – finance in search of profits, based on risk.
We do not know what the King thought of this prodigy. After a while William turned and led his party back to the palace.
NOTES
1 ‘A Monarchy Depending on God’
1.Bohun (ed), Filmer, Patriarcha, preface, chapter 1, §5.
2.Sandford, The History of the Coronation of James II, p.108.
3.Sandford, The History of the Coronation of James II, p.97.
4.Bohun (ed), Filmer, Patriarcha, preface, chapter 1, §5.
5.Sandford, The History of the Coronation of James II, p.6.
2 ‘Rebels and Traitors’
1.North, Life of the Honourable Sir Dudley North, p.144.
2.North, Life of the Honourable Sir Dudley North, p.152.
3.Scott, Algernon Sidney and the Restoration Crisis, p.29.
4.Marvell, An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government, p.4.
5.Callow, The Making of King James II, p.126.
6.Evelyn, Diaries, 30 March 1673.
7.Davies (ed), Papers of Devotion of James II, p.23.
8.Callow, The Making of King James II, p.157.
9.Davies (ed), Papers of Devotion of James II, introduction.
10.Chesterfield, Letters, Chesterfield to Halifax, 10 December 1686, p.328.
11.King, Political and Literary Anecdotes
12.Laslett (ed), Two Treatises of Government, introduction p.26.
13.Harris, London Crowds in the Reign of Charles II, p.109.
14.Coote, Royal Survivor, p.306.
15.Scott, Algernon Sidney and the Restoration Crisis, p.54.
16.Clarke, The Life of James the Second, ii p.5.
17.Ashley, The Glorious Revolution, p.30.
18.The Protestant Martyrs or, the Bloody Assizes, 1685.
19.Whiting, Persecution Expos’d, p.32.
20.Evelyn, Diaries, 15 July 1685.
21.Wigfield, The Monmouth Rebellion, p.30.
22.North, Autobiography, p.19.
23.Bohun, An Address to Freemen and Freeholders of the Nation, iv.
24.Filmer, Patriarcha, ed Bohun, chapter 1, §10.
25.Filmer, Patriarcha, ed Laslett, p.53.
26.Filmer, Patriarcha, ed Bohun, p.177.
27.Scott, Algernon Sidney and the Restoration Crisis, p.45.
28.Davies (ed), Papers of Devotion of James II, introduction.
29.North, Autobiography, p.178.
30.Burnet, History of His Own Time, iii p.1.
31.Evelyn, Diaries, 2 October 1685.
32.Bohun, Autobiography, 6 February 1685.
33.North, Autobiography, p.178.
3 ‘A Favourite of the People’
1.Locke, Correspondence, letter 771, Locke to Edward Clarke, 26 August 1683.
2.Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics and Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, p.416.
3.Papillon, Memoirs of Thomas Papillon, p.259.
4.Locke, Correspondence, letter 797, Locke to Pembroke, 28 November / 8 December 1684.
5.Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ii §128, §123.
6.Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ii §87, §123, §30, §43.
7.Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics and Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, p.223.
8.Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ii §138.
9.Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ii §230.
10.Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics and Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, p.375.
11.Axminster Ecclesiastica, p.93.
12.King (ed), Barker, Poems referring to the Times, i ll50–1.
13.Axminster Ecclesiastica, p.93.
14.Playford, Theatre of Music, iii p.28.
15.North, Autobiography, p.19.
16.Clarke, The Life of James the Second, ii p.3.
17.Clarke, The Life of James the Second, ii p.4.
18.Reresby, Memoirs, 10 February 1685.
19.Evelyn, Diaries, 17 September 1685.
20.North, Life of the Honourable Sir Dudley North, p.177.
21.Defoe, Review, 13 March 1713.
22.Evelyn, Diaries, 26 July 1685.
23.Whiting, Persecution Expos’d, p.141.
24.Axminster Ecclesiastica, p.94.
25.North, Autobiography, p.38.
26.Whiting, Persecution Expos’d, p.143.
27.Wigfield, The Monmouth Rebellion, p.69.
28.Burnet, History of His Own Time, p.51.
29.Burnet, History of His Own Time, p.54, footnote.
30.Ailesbury, Memoirs, i p.119.
31.Evelyn, Diaries, 16 September 1685.
32.The Protestant Martyrs or, the Bloody Assizes, 1685.
33.Clarke, The Life of James the Second, ii p.58.
34.Barbon, Apology for the Builder, p.1.
4 ‘The Richest City in the World’
1.North, Life of the Honourable Sir Dudley North, p.148.
2.Strype, A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, vi p.87.
3.Miège, New State of England, ii p.14.
4.Bohun, Autobiography, p.71.
5.North, Life of the Honourable Sir Dudley North, p.162.
6.North, Autobiography, p.53.
7.North, Autobiography, pp.53ff.
8.North, Autob
iography, pp.53ff.
9.Barbon, Apology for the Builder, p.2.
10.Barbon, Apology for the Builder, p.20.
11.Barbon, Apology for the Builder, p.13, p.16.
12.Survey of London, St Anne’s Soho, i p.30.
13.National Archive, C7/71/26.
5 ‘The High and Mighty States of the United Provinces’
1.Bethel, The Interest of Princes and States, p.3.
2.Barbon, Discourse of Trade, pp.58–9
3.Temple, Observations Upon the United Provinces, p.88, p.85.
4.Temple, Observations Upon the United Provinces, pp.94ff.
5.Evelyn, Diaries, c.21–24 August 1641.
6.Temple, Observations Upon the United Provinces, p.118.
7.Israel (ed), The Anglo-Dutch Moment, p.432.
8.Temple, Observations Upon the United Provinces, p.56, p.94.
9.Temple, Observations Upon the United Provinces, p.129.
10.De la Court, True Interest of Holland, p.66, p.36.
11.Temple, Observations Upon the United Provinces, p.134.
12.Temple, Observations Upon the United Provinces, p.53.
13.Temple, Observations Upon the United Provinces, p.148.
6 ‘A More Considerable and Dangerous Enemy’
1.Baxter, William III, p.51.
2.Temple, Observations Upon the United Provinces, xiii.
3.Temple, Observations Upon the United Provinces, p.145.
4.Temple, Observations Upon the United Provinces, p.195.
5.Woodbridge, Sir William Temple, p.116.
6.Courtenay (ed), Memoirs of Sir William Temple, p.254.
7.Courtenay (ed), Memoirs of Sir William Temple, p.256.
8.Courtenay (ed), Memoirs of Sir William Temple, p.340.
9.Baxter, William III, p.148.
10.Dalrymple, Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, ii p.2.
11.Ashley, Glorious Revolution, p.74.
12.Israel (ed), The Anglo-Dutch Moment, p.136.
13.Burnet, History of His Own Time, p.133.
7 ‘Such a Monarchy as Other Monarchs Have Not Even Considered’
1.Lough (ed), Locke’s Travels in France, p.151.
The Last Revolution Page 44