don. James, finding himself
without a party, offered vain concessions and afterwards fled to the
court of his ally, Louis XIV. of France. By a provisional body of
lords, former commoners, and officials William was requested to act as
temporary "governor" until the people should have chosen a national
"convention."[34] This convention assembled January 22, 1689, resolved
that James, by reason of his flight, should be construed to have
abdicated, and established on the throne as joint sovereigns William
and Mary, with the understanding that the actual government of the
realm should devolve upon the king.

[Footnote 34: Not properly a parliament, because
not summoned by a king.]

The Revolution of 1688-1689 was signalized by the putting into written
form of no inconsiderable portion of the English constitution as it
then existed. February 19, 1698, the new sovereigns formally accepted
a Declaration of Right, drawn up by the convention, and by act of
Parliament, December 16 following, this instrument, under the name of
the Bill of Rights, was made a part of the law of the land. In it were
denied specifically a long list of prerogatives to which the last
Stuart had laid claim--those, in particular, of dispensing with the
laws, establishing ecclesiastical commissions, levying imposts without
parliamentary assent, and maintaining a standing army under the
exclusive control of the crown. In it also were guaranteed certain
fundamental rights which during the controversies of the seventeenth
century had been brought repeatedly in question, including those of
petition, freedom of elections, and freedom of speech on the part (p. 033)
of members of Parliament.[35] The necessity of frequent meetings
of Parliament was affirmed, and a succession clause was inserted by
which Roman Catholics and persons who should marry Roman Catholics,
were excluded from the throne. In the Bill of Rights were thus summed
up the essential results of the Revolution, and, more remotely, of the
entire seventeenth-century parliamentary movement. With its enactment
the doctrine of divine right disappeared forever from the domain of
practical English politics. The entire circumstance of William III.'s
accession determined the royal tenure to be, as it thereafter
remained, not by inherent or vested right, but conditioned upon the
national will.[36]

[Footnote 35: In this connection should be recalled