James II and the Three Questions: Religious Toleration and the Landed Classes, 1687–1688 (review)

In October 1687, King James II ordered his lords lieutenant to ask the leading office-holders and other gentry of their counties whether (if elected to Parliament) they would vote for the repeal of the penal laws and Test Acts, whether they would vote for candidates pledged to repeal them, and whether they would live peaceably with people of all religious views. His aim was to secure a Parliament that would repeal these laws, allowing both Catholics and Protestant Dissenters to worship freely and to hold public offices of all kinds (from which the Test Acts excluded them). Most of those holding local offices were Anglican Tories, and the majority of responses were negative or evasive—many could not say “yes,” but did not want to offend the king. His preparations were never put to the test, thanks to King William III’s invasion late in 1688.

Most historians have seen James’s “campaign” to pack Parliament as counterproductive and doomed to fail. The dismissal from office of those whose responses were negative or ambivalent showed that opposition to his policies was widespread, whereas the very fact of asking candidates and voters to pledge themselves in advance was seen as unconstitutional—the negation of free elections and free debate within Parliament. The questions could thus be seen as (in Walker’s words) a public-relations disaster. In many respects Walker shares the received view, but with two important qualifications.

First, the claim that the failure of James’s strategy was inevitable owed much to hindsight. The alienation of the Tories and the failure to win Whig support in their place owed much to events in 1688, notably the prosecution of the Seven Bishops and the birth of the king’s son, opening up the prospect of an ongoing Catholic dynasty. Above all, the prospect of invasion brought the hope of deliverance. Second, Walker argues that the third question—on living peaceably with people regardless of their religion—was important, as it encouraged people to declare themselves publicly in favor of tolerance or toleration, which he seems to see as one and the same. (Admittedly, he also suggests that many who had given “unsatisfactory” answers to the other two questions were happy to please the king in this case, especially as it did not commit them to anything.) He argues that this encouraged religious pluralism, whereas before religious persecution had been justified by equating nonconformity with political disaffection. However, this claim seems exaggerated. Since Elizabeth’s reign, the English state had (in theory) prosecuted Catholics for their allegiance to a foreign ruler (the pope) rather than for their religion, while Dissenters were accused of plotting sedition and “murdering” King Charles I. Many people interacted socially with Catholics or Dissenters, while arguing for the need to guard against the political implications of their principles. That said, James II’s Declaration of Indulgence did lead to a wider measure of toleration from 1689—from which his fellow Catholics were excluded.

It would be unfair to conclude this review on a negative note. The book is well researched and well written. If it does little to change the bigger picture of James II’s reign, it sheds a great deal of light on the problems of Tory landowners, who struggled to reconcile their fear of popery and dislike of Dissent with their loyalties to Church and king. Some were forthright in their negatives; others took refuge in equivocation and evasion. Walker is sensitive to the nuances of their responses and helps his readers to understand better the dilemmas and discomforts of the Tories during and after the Revolution of 1688–89.