ABSTRACT
The background The Bill of Rights 1689 is of greater contemporary constitutional importance than the Magna Carta and the Petition of Right. The source of the Bill of Rights lies, in large measure, in the tensions between Roman Catholicism and the state, originating with the conflict between the Holy See of Rome and Henry VIII (1491-1547). The Succession Act, Act of Supremacy and the Treason Act 1534 had established the supremacy of the King as head of the Church of England and destroyed formal papal authority in England. Catholicism did not die out, but over the next 150 years, suspicion and fear of ‘popery’ remained high at a public level. The death of Charles II in 1685 heralded the succession of James II, an avowed Roman Catholic, who nevertheless publicly declared himself bound ‘to preserve this government both in Church and state as it is now by law established’.5 Despite such assurances, in subsequent years James II strove to remove discrimination against Catholics and to place Catholics in prominent public administrative offices at both central and local level. Prominent Anglicans, dismayed by James’s promotion of Catholicism, entered into negotiations with William of Orange, the Protestant husband of James’s daughter Mary, with a view to their seizing the throne. In the absence of a male heir, Mary was next in line to the English Crown. However, in 1688, James’s wife gave birth to a son, thus providing a Catholic heir. In July of that year, James dissolved parliament. William of Orange landed in England with his army on 5 November 1688 and James II fled the country, landing in France in December 1688.
