"This idea of a liberal descent": the Glorious Revolution, Anglican political theology, and Edmund Burke
Two sermons particularly illustrate this. The first is Daniel Waterland's 1723 Restoration Day sermon. The second is Jonathan Swift's 1725 Sermon for on the anniversary of the Martyrdom of King Charles I. Waterland was a Church Whig, Swift a Hanoverian Tory. This itself is quite significant, indicative of a shared account of the Revolution which would shape High Church political thought.
Burke opens the Reflections with his insistence that those radical Dissenters in the United Kingdom proclaiming support for the French Revolution could not do so on the basis of the Glorious Revolution:
These gentlemen ... in all their reasonings on the Revolution of 1688, have a revolution which happened in England about forty years before.
This was a theme which both Waterland and Swift emphasised. For Waterland, the acts of the 1640s contrasted with the ordered liberty of 1688:
Under pretence of
espousing liberty and property, those wretched patriots pulled
down all the ancient fences made for the security of both; shew
ing at length what kind of liberty it was that they affected:
liberty to imprison, banish, plunder, and destroy all that had
either loyalty to provoke their resentments, or revenues to supply their avarice: liberty first to deface, spoil, and crush the
monarch, and next to accuse and condemn, and in the end to
murder the man: liberty to tread under foot all authorities, to
set up and pull down parliaments, or to model them at pleasure ... in a word, liberty to turn a kingdom upside down, and
to leave it languishing, and well nigh expiring in its miserable
distractions and most deplorable confusions
Swift similarly contrasted the Revolution settlement with the turmoil of the 1640s:
Therefore, those who seem to think they cannot otherwise justify the late Revolution, and the change of the succession, than by lessening the guilt of the Puritans, do certainly put the greatest affront imaginable upon the preſent powers, by supposing any relation, or resemblance, between that rebellion and the late Revolution; and, consequently, that the present establishment is to be defended by the same arguments which those usurpers made use of, who, to obtain their tyranny, trampled under foot all the laws both of God and man.
This contrast, then, between 1688 and the 1640s, central to Burke's understanding, was evident in both Whig Waterland and the Tory Swift. They also shared an understanding of the necessity of the Glorious Revolution. Swift pointed to the actions of James II:
For that unhappy Prince, King James II, did not only invade our laws and liberties, but would have forced a false religion upon his subjects, for which he was deservedly rejected, since there could be no other remedy found, or at least agreed on.
When Waterland in his sermon challenged those proposing a Stuart 'restoration', extolled the Revolution settlement and contrasted it with the consequences of the commitments of the House of Stuart:
But what is it that wants to be restored at this day? Is it the people's liberties? But no nation under the sun enjoys more or greater ... Does monarchy, or episcopacy, or parliamentary powers, want to be restored as formerly? the nobility to their seats, the clergy to their cures, the gentry to their paternal inheritances? No. Nor would the return of Popery be a proper means, were there any thing wanting of this kind to restore or to resettle men in their just rights, but rather to unsettle every thing, and to throw us back again into the wildest confusions.
For Burke this was why it was necessary for the succession to pass to William and Mary, to avoid the consequences of recalling James to the throne:
to deluge their country in blood, and again to bring their religion, laws, and liberties into the peril they had just escaped.
It was this which, for Burke, required "a small and temporary deviation from the strict order of hereditary succession", "an hereditary descent qualified with protestantism". This echoed Waterland's understanding of the succession:
To be short, lineal succession is still kept up, as far as is consistent with the nation's just rights and liberties, or with the fundamental laws and constitution of the kingdom; that is , as far as our ancestors ( in whose power it was) ever intended any such strict rule of succession, or in fact observed it: nor can reason, or good sense, or common justice to a free people, and under a limited monarchy, demand or admit of more.
Likewise, Burke's recognition that the Hanoverian succession "was derived from the same stock" and "an hereditary descent in the same blood", was to be found in Waterland:
who knows not that his Majesty [George I] now reigning (and long may he reign) is a branch of the same royal stock with him whose restoration we are now celebrating.
Just as Waterland's understanding of the succession was echoed in Burke, so too was Swift's understanding of limited monarchy:
As kings are called gods upon earth, so some would allow them an equal power with God over all laws and ordinances; and that the liberty, and property, and life, and religion of the subject, depended wholly upon the breath of the prince; which, however, I hope, was never meant by those who pleaded for passive obedience.
When Burke refers to the "old fanatics of single arbitrary power", declaring that this is a view "no creature now maintains", he was echoing the vision of limited monarchy shared by Waterland and Swift.
Finally, in both Waterland and Swift we see a key characteristic of Burke, the prudence and caution required in "the science of government". Thus Waterland:
We have felt the mischief of disturbing settlements, and throwing government off the hinges: let it be a warning to all, not to be fond of experiments of that kind, but to prize and value an establishment when they have it; particularly to be thankful for the present one, which, through many doubtful struggles and weary strifes, has been transmitted to us, from the Restoration down to this very day; but withal augmented, improved, and strengthened, as later experiences have brought in more wisdom.
And Swift:
One great design of my discourse was to give you warning against running into either extreme of two bad opinions with relation to obedience ... Between these two extremes, it is easy, from what hath been said, to choose a middle; to be good and loyal subjects, yet, according to your power, faithful asserters of your religion and liberties. To avoid all broachers and preachers of new-fangled doctrines in the church; to be strict observers of the laws, which cannot be justly taken from you without your own consent. In short, to obey God and the king, and meddle not with those who are given to change.
For Waterland and Swift, the Revolution settlement embodied the prudence and caution required to rightly and justly order the polity. This is also seen in Burke, who follows his commentary on the Revolution of 1688, contrasting it with both the 1640s and 1789, with some of the most famous phrases in the Reflections:
The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori ... it is with infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in any tolerable degree for the ages the common purposes of society, or on building it up again, without having models and patterns of approved utility before his eyes ... The nature of man is intricate; the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity; and therefore no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable either to man's nature, or to the quality of his affairs ... The pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes; and in proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false. The rights of men are in a sort of middle, incapable of definition, but not impossible to be discerned.
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