If Catholics had not been excluded from the throne and James II or his Stuart descendants had ruled, rather than the Hanoverians, then it is hard to see Britain following the path that led to the triumph of Lockean ideas of religious toleration, constitutional monarchy, parliamentary democracy, and the rule of law, which ultimately made possible the United States constitution. Instead, England might have gone in the direction of France, leading to a second civil war or less than glorious revolution with a French-style terror to follow.
I know households where the writer would be well advised not to go with such talk. However, it’s not a novel idea. We papists may rail at Locke and his liberal, I might say libertarian ilk, but our papacy was not big on democracy in those days and even now seems to relish global controlling mechanisms. And what of the U.S., our city on a hill, which told the world how not to name a king, but a president, the rest of which is history.
We speak here of Stuarts, not Tudors, of the 8th Henry’s denuding the monasteries, the “bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.” Among other depredations.
Blithe Spirit 