356 History of the English Landed Iniei^est. 



cuits of 1688. While the parsons and the squires were leaving 

 him in shoals, while the army was evincing its disaffection, 

 and while the French king and other influential friends were 

 repeatedly warning him, James took no heed. When, how- 

 ever, William's preparations were complete, and the invasion of 

 England was only postponed by contrary winds, he took the 

 alarm and attempted to conciliate his subjects. But promises 

 wrung by terror did not deceive the nation. Before even this 

 fresh departure of the king's could have penetrated further 

 than the court, William, surrounded by the representatives of 

 every English party, had landed at Torbay, and after a short 

 period of hesitation and half-hearted resistance, the males of 

 the Stuart Dynasty had vanished for ever from the English 

 throne. 



For the nation as a whole the Revolution effected two 

 fundamental reforms, as pointed out by Professor Rogers. 

 First, it made supply depend upon the House of Commons ; and 

 secondly, it affirmed that the monarch should be of his subjects' 

 religion instead of their being of his. "Save," says this author, 

 " that the sovereign's creed should be Protestant, Parliament 

 did not and could not define it further. AVilliam was a Dutch 

 Calvinist, Anne a High Churchwoman, George a German 

 Lutheran. Neither the first nor the last had, before he became 

 king, been familar with episcopacy. Both certainly con- 

 formed to the English ritual, but William's bishops and 

 George's bishops had little in them of the policy of Laud 

 or Sheldon." ^ 



What the Revolution did for the special subject of our 

 history we shall st-e better when we have examined the 

 economy of the landed interest during the later Stuart period, 

 and compared it with that after the Revolution. 



' Eogers, Prices ami Agriculture^ vol. v., Introduction. 



