English Bill of Rights

Audience

Although it is very similar to the Declaration of Rights in content, the Bill of Rights was directed at a somewhat different audience. The declaration had itself been preceded by William of Orange's own Declaration of the Hague, which William's close adviser, Gilbert Burnet, had translated into English and then distributed when William landed at Tor Bay in November 1688. The audience for the Declaration of the Hague was very broad, since the document was aimed at garnering on-the-ground support for William. The Declaration of Rights, however, sought to appease the Anglican clergy and Protestant royalist supporters of James II; it was also directed at William and Mary themselves, who had threatened to leave England if they were not crowned or voted sufficient revenue to continue the Dutch war with France.

The Bill of Rights had four different audiences. First, for William and Mary, the bill was a clear statement of the extent and limitations of their royal prerogative. Second, for James II and his Catholic, Irish, and French supporters, it proclaimed that the settlement about succession to the English throne was legal, final, and irreversible. Third, the bill was directed at all members of Parliament, the very body that had drafted it, in their capacity as representatives of the English people. It set out in clear language certain rights that all English subjects were entitled to within the framework of seventeenth-century constitutional thought, such as freedom to petition the monarch regarding grievances. Finally, the bill functioned as a broader statement to European powers that England was a constitutional monarchy and remained a Protestant nation ruled by Parliament.