Britain in the seventeenth century, the people, including many aristocrats, had rebelled against the absolutist tendencies of the Stuart kings, leading to chaos. There was the execution of Charles I, the commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell, the Restoration of the Stuarts (which led to more political and religious strife), and finally the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when William of Orange and his wife, Mary, were crowned to preside over a balanced constitution. As a condition of kingship, William and Mary agreed to uphold an English Declaration of Rights that limited the monarchy’s power to
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