WILLIAM made ready to invade, but rather than fight his son-in-law James fled to France, tossing the Great Seal of the realm into the Thames on December 11th, 1688. Following elections in January 1689, the ‘Convention’ Parliament offered the crown to William and Mary, and a series of Constitutional amendments, including a Declaration of Rights enshrining free and regular elections and freedom of speech, and a Toleration Act tiptoeing towards religious liberty, marked a new era in English history.
The settlement was immediately challenged. The exiled James brought an army to Ireland in 1689, backed by the French, but William ultimately prevailed in the Nine Years’ War;* a series of rebellions by James’s supporters, the Jacobites, was backed by France and Spain but in 1746 the last of them was crushed.
In 1702, Mary’s sister Anne inherited a constitutional system quite unlike anything else in Europe, in which Crown and Parliament curtailed each other’s powers. Hitherto unimaginable liberties were now guaranteed to the people. There was no going back.*
See The Nine Years’ War.
See The Temperate Zone, and posts tagged The British Constitution (32).
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Word Games
Sevens Based on this passage
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Variations: 1.expand your answer to exactly fourteen words. 2.expand your answer further, to exactly twenty-one words. 3.include one of the following words in your answer: if, but, despite, because, (al)though, unless.
Spinners Find in Think and Speak
For each group of words, compose a sentence that uses all three. You can use any form of the word: for example, cat → cats, go → went, or quick → quickly, though neigh → neighbour is stretching it a bit.
This exercise uses words found in the accompanying passage.
1 Any. Feel. Monarchy.
2 He. Last. Rebellion.
3 System. Throne. Toss.
Variations: 1. include direct and indirect speech 2. include one or more of these words: although, because, despite, either/or, if, unless, until, when, whether, which, who 3. use negatives (not, isn’t, neither/nor, never, nobody etc.)
Homonyms Find in Think and Speak
Each of the words below has more than one possible meaning. Compose your own sentences to show what those different meanings are.
This exercise uses words found in the accompanying passage.
1. Lead. 2. Second. 3. Last. 4. Refuse. 5. Free. 6. Brief. 7. Right. 8. Break. 9. Seal.
Add Vowels Find in Think and Speak
Make words by adding vowels to each group of consonants below. You may add as many vowels as you like before, between or after the consonants, but you may not add any consonants or change the order of those you have been given. See if you can beat our target of common words.
wns (5+3)
owns. wanes. weans. wines. wins.
weenies. wienies. winos.
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