The Protestant declaration was unanimously voted. The King of England, head of the Anglican Church, should naturally belong to that Church. In regard to the vacancy of the throne, the Tories insisted on previously debating the question of a regency, proposed some time before by Bancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, and now advocated by Lord Rochester and Lord Nottingham. Divided between their conviction of the dangers that King James caused the country to incur, and their sentiments of loyalty, the members of this fraction of the Tory party hoped to remain faithful to their oath of allegiance by treating the truant monarch like an invalid incapable of governing, and hence obliged to delegate his powers to the Prince of Orange. This course having been rejected, Lord Danby admitted the throne to be vacant, and demanded that the Princess Mary be declared queen, according to the principle that the throne could not remain unoccupied. The Whigs, with Halifax at their head, loudly maintained the right of the nation to choose its monarch. King James was alive, and the princess could not then be his heiress; the throne became elective, and the Prince of Orange alone was worthy of being called to it.
The discussion between the two houses, as well as that inside the House of Lords, was waxing hot; the crowd was pressing to the gates of the palace. Lord Lovelace informed the peers that he was charged with a petition demanding the immediate proclamation of the Prince and Princess of Orange as King and Queen of England. "By whom has the petition been signed?" was asked. "No man has yet put his hand to it," answered the bold nobleman, the first to meet the Prince of Orange when he landed; "but when I shall bring it here, there will be signers enough." The same threats were made to the House of Commons. The princess was detained in Holland by the state of the sea, encumbered by ice. Danby was zealously pleading her cause before the Lords, without William, who remained faithful to his promise of committing to the Convention all grave political questions, interfering in any way in the debate. One of his friends, a Dutchman, probably Dykvelt, accidentally was present at the debate; he was pressed to say what he might know of the prince's sentiments. The Dutchman held out for a long time. "I can only guess his Highness's state of mind," he said at last; "but since you want to know what I fancy, I think he would scarcely care to be his wife's gentleman of the bedchamber; but I actually know nothing at all." "I know enough, and even a little too much," retorted Danby.
Finally Burnet made up his mind to reveal what the princess had lately confided to him. "I know, for a long time," he said, "that she had determined, even in case she should have mounted the throne in the regular order of succession, to hand over her power to her husband, with the sanction of Parliament." At the same time Mary wrote to Danby: "I am the prince's wife, and I have no other desire than to remain subjected to him; the greatest wrong that could be done me would be to put me forward as his rival; and I shall never hold as friends those who would follow such a course."
In a moment the impetuous Tories maintained the rights of Princess Anne, threatened by the elevation of William of Orange; the Churchills were enlisted in her cause, though the princess was making no objections to the exaltation of her brother-in-law, when the prince summoned the leaders of both parties to the House of Lords. He summed up in a few words the various alternatives agitated in Parliament. "I have kept silent hitherto," he added; "I have used neither solicitation nor threats; I have not even let my views or desires transpire. I have neither the right nor the inclination to impose anything on the Convention. I only reserve the privilege of refusing functions which I could not perform with honor to myself or advantage to the country. I am resolved never to be regent, and I shall not accept that fraction of administrative power which the princess, raised to the throne, could entrust to me. I esteem her as much as a man can esteem a woman; but I am not so made that I can be tied to the apron-string of the best of wives. There is but one rôle which I can honorably fill: if the Houses offer me the crown for my life, I will accept it; if not, I will return without regret to my native land." The prince ended by saying that he thought it just to secure the succession to the Princess Anne and her children, in preference to the posterity which he might have by another wife than Princess Mary.
The question was decided: William and Mary were to reign together as sovereigns of England, and the government was entrusted to William. A conference between the two houses soon resulted in a vote. Lord Nottingham demanded a modification in the oaths of allegiance "I don't approve the acts of the Convention," he said, "but I want to be able to promise to obey the new sovereigns faithfully." The House of Commons had charged Somers with drawing up the Declaration of Rights. The jurist's name had for the first time resounded with éclat during the trial of the bishops, and already his rare abilities, the power and subtilty of his mind, as well as his masculine eloquence, had placed him in a high rank, destined soon to be the highest. After a firm and plain statement of the people's rights, Parliament declared William and Mary, Prince and Princess of Orange, King and Queen of England, during their lives. After them the crown devolved upon Princess Anne and her children; in their default, it reverted to the issue of William.
Princess Mary had just landed in England; she had hardly arrived at Whitehall, and already people criticised her attitude and the first indications of her character. Those who had seen her had found her in high spirits, determined to enjoy her new grandeur, forgetful of the catastrophe which hurled her father from the throne she was about to occupy. Burnet himself was shocked. "I had always noticed so much good feeling in her whole conduct," said he, "that my surprise was extreme to see her deficient in it on this occasion. Some days later I took the liberty of asking her, how it could be that the misfortunes of a father had made so little impression on her. She took my frankness in good part, as usual, and assured me that it was not for want of having felt them keenly, if she had had the air of not thinking of them; but because she had been directed in a letter to affect much gayety. It was possible that she had overdone the rôle they had made for her, so strange was it to her true disposition." On the 13th of February, the two houses betook themselves formally to Whitehall, to offer the crown to the Prince and Princess of Orange. Halifax was spokesman. "We accept with gratitude what you offer us," said William. "For my own part, I can assure you that these laws of England which I have already defended, will be the rule of my conduct. I shall apply myself constantly to develop the prosperity of the realm; and, to aid me in the task, I count upon the counsel of the two Houses, which I am inclined to put before my own." The public proclamation before the great gate of the palace was hailed by the acclamations of the crowd. The revolution was consummated; a new reign was commencing.
With the new reign began a new era. The revolution of 1688 had been singularly moderate and reasonable; it had not claimed a new right, it had not added a liberty to the rights and liberties which England then enjoyed; it had not changed a custom; it did not renounce one of the forms or ceremonies observed in the old times, and dear to the veneration of the people; it had simply proclaimed in principle and established in fact that the nation regarded its rights and liberties as its most precious treasure, that it placed them above hereditary titles and the rights of the throne. Liberal as well as legal, it demanded from the prince a certain measure of good government and of respect for the national wishes, at the same time that it unrolled from the mists of the past those grand principles of the compact of sovereign and people, which England had known how to keep and guard through perils and through oppression. The work of liberty was not yet complete; all its seeds rested in the Declaration of Rights drawn up by Somers, and solemnly accepted by the new sovereigns. The bitter time of revolutions had ended for England.