Passage of the Bill of Rights

Timeline

1. 1689Westminster · LondonWhile debating the succession, the Convention listed James II's acts of repealing laws, taxing without Parliament, establishing a Commission for Ecclesiastical Causes, and maintaining a standing army in peacetime, and drafted a list of rights limiting future royal power. Whigs and Tories disputed the wording of 'abdication' versus 'desertion,' but agreed on limiting Catholic monarchs and safeguarding Parliament.
2. 1689Whitehall · LondonOn 13 February both houses presented the Declaration of Rights to William and Mary. It declared that James had abdicated governance, that the throne was vacant, and invited the two to reign jointly after enumerating subjects' rights. William replied in his own name accepting, with Mary present; this date was later treated by statute as the commencement of the Bill of Rights.
3. 1689Westminster · LondonAfter the Convention reconstituted itself as a formal Parliament, it wrote the Declaration's content into the Bill of Rights (An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown), receiving royal assent on 16 December. It barred Catholics and their spouses from the throne, required frequent parliaments, protected parliamentary speech from impeachment, and reiterated that no taxation or standing army in peacetime without Parliament's consent. John Locke's 'Two Treatises of Government,' published the same year, provided a contractual explanation for this arrangement.