Under William III, Parliament extracted other concessions from the Sovereign and established the Civil List and the principle that Parliament determined the Sovereign’s income and allowances (apart from the Crown estates). And most crucially, Parliament asserted its right to determine the line of succession. Only Parliament could pass supply and appropriate funds for standing armies in peacetime. Parliament cemented the Glorious Revolution of 1688 through the passage of the Bill of Rights, 1689, which codified Parliament’s powers and authorities (such as parliamentary privilege and Members’ freedom of speech) and its constitutional limitations upon the Sovereign’s exercise of Crown prerogative. The Last Stuarts deals with perhaps the most consequential monarchs in English and British history, for King William III and Queen Anne (1689-1714) laid the foundation of the United Kingdom as “the first modern State”, in Starkey’s estimation, and constitutional monarchy. This ended in 1688 when Parliament invited William of Orange to become King and deemed James II to have abdicated the throne. This series deals with the fallout and aftermath of the Cromwellian Protectorate and the uneasy truce that developed between Parliament and the Crown under Charles II and his brother James II.

However, the republic had fallen apart after Cromwell’s death and by 1660, Parliament invited Charles II, living in exile since the regicide, to return to England and become King. Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector of the new republican Commonwealth. The Parliamentarians had defeated the Royalists and committed the ultimate act of treason by executing Charles I in 1649.

History remembers the regicide of Louis XVI but forgets that England underwent similar political turmoil over 150 years before, but ultimately ended its republican experiment upon the Restoration of the Stuarts. The Middle Stuarts covers the Restoration to Glorious Revolution, Charles II and James II (1660-1689). At the risk of WordPress and SOPA shutting down Parliamentum, I’ll embed the main videos here. He devotes a series to each major monarchy or dynasty (as in Royal House, like the Tudors, the Stuarts, and the Hanoverians) and narrates this history of this institution in his characteristic acerbic wit and wry historian’s sense of irony. For an excellent history of the monarchy in the United Kingdom, I highly recommend David Starkey’s series Monarchy, which he adapted from his latest book Crown & Country – The Kings and Queens of England: A History.

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