Great English dates No 8: 1688 - the Glorious Revolution

The Protestant William of Orange's seizure of the throne from the Catholic James II was blatant usurpation, but it settled once and for all the conflict between crown and parliament

The 16th-century Reformation and 17th-century revolution can in retrospect seem inevitable in the story of England. Both were close-run things. Though initially Protestant, the Stuart monarchs dallied not only with Roman Catholicism but with the idea, much touted by James I, that kingship was divinely ordained and ...