The English Bill of Rights Regime

Timeline

1. 1689Convention Parliament at Westminster · WestminsterOn 6 February Parliament resolved that James II had abdicated the throne. On 13 February the crown was formally conferred jointly on William and Mary, and the Declaration of Rights was read, cataloguing the late Stuart infringements of parliamentary liberty and asserting principles of taxation, standing armies, freedom of speech in Parliament, and regular parliaments. Parliamentary historians note that the Declaration was not submitted as a 'precondition for accepting the crown,' but its clauses subsequently acquired statutory force.
2. 1689Parliament at Westminster · WestminsterThe Convention Parliament, with the royal assent of William and Mary, passed the Declaration as the Bill of Rights. The text confirmed that only Protestants could inherit the English throne and systematically limited royal prerogative. At the coronation on 11 April the oath was changed to govern according to laws made in Parliament, rather than merely the 'laws and customs' granted by the kings of England.
3. 1689–1701Parliament at Westminster · WestminsterThe same session's Toleration Act addressed Protestant dissenters, and the Mutiny Act limited military law to annual renewal; the 1694 Triennial Act reaffirmed regular parliaments; the 1701 Act of Settlement wrote the Hanoverian succession into statute. This body of legislation turned the 1689 principles into workable fiscal, military, and succession rules, explicitly subordinating the monarchy to parliamentary statute.
4. 1701Westminster · WestminsterThe Bill of Rights did not claim universal rights, yet it became one of the most frequently cited statutes in Britain's unwritten constitution and provided an institutional template for later, more general rights documents (including the US Bill of Rights). Parliamentary sovereignty, Protestant succession, and limits on royal taxation formed the basic framework of subsequent English and British politics.