ABSTRACT
Under William and Mary, and then Anne, English government was far stronger, far more competent at home and abroad, than it had been at any time during the Restoration period. It fought wars on land and sea, raised revenues and carried debts which neither Charles nor James ever contemplated. The political nation fell into Whig and Tory camps which fought elections with a verve, intensity and frequency which in Restoration England can be associated only with the Exclusion Crisis; but after 1689 no election can really be said to have called into question the state as then constituted. In some ways, it seemed that Hobbes' Leviathan had come to be, an ironic result of a Revolution we normally associate with John Locke. But certainly, when compared to the sheer power of post-Revolution English government, the plans for absolutism of Charles and Danby (if they had them) and of James seem Lilliputian indeed. After 1689, ironically, country Tories were to make exactly this point, fondly remembering ‘King Charles's golden days' as a time of low taxes, peace and blessed quiet, a time when independent country gentlemen ruled their respective roosts and sent their respected neighbours, on occasion, to Westminster to offer advice and laws to the crown and loyally consider the crown's moderate requests for cash. The Tory memory, of course, was selective and therefore distorted, but it had truth in it too.
