On a cold morning — January 30, 1649 — a king of England walked out of a window of the Banqueting House at Whitehall onto a scaffold draped in black. Charles I wore two shirts; he did not want the crowd to see him shiver and mistake it for fear. "I am the martyr of the people," he is reported to have said. Then the executioner's axe fell, and a groan went up from the watching crowd "such as I never heard before," wrote one witness, "and desire I may never hear again."
No European monarch had ever been tried in his own courts, in the name of his own people, and beheaded as a tyrant. While Louis XIV was building Versailles to make kingship look eternal and divine, the English had just demonstrated that a king could be held accountable — and removed. Why did these two neighbors travel in opposite directions?
The English crisis was not really about one king's personality — it was about a structural question: who holds ultimate authority, the monarch or Parliament? The Stuart kings believed in the divine right of kings, the doctrine that a monarch answers only to God. James I (r. 1603–1625) lectured Parliament that "kings are justly called gods." His son Charles I (r. 1625–1649) governed as if he meant it.
Three grievances braided together:
Connection (backward): The principle that the king cannot tax without consent runs from Magna Carta (1215) → Petition of Right (1628) → English Bill of Rights (1689). Constitutionalism in England is cumulative, built precedent on precedent — unlike the clean theoretical break of the later French Revolution.
The crisis broke when a Scottish rebellion (over Charles's attempt to impose Anglican prayer books) forced him to recall Parliament in 1640 to fund an army. This Long Parliament instead attacked his ministers and stripped his powers. In January 1642 Charles marched troops into the House of Commons to arrest five members — they had fled. It was a fatal blunder. By that summer, England was at war with itself.
The war pitted Cavaliers (Royalists, supporting the king, drawing on the aristocracy and the north and west) against Roundheads (Parliamentarians, named for the short-cropped hair of Puritan apprentices, strongest in London, the south, and east). The decisive figure was a Puritan gentleman and brilliant cavalry commander, Oliver Cromwell, who forged the disciplined New Model Army (1645). Parliament's victories at Marston Moor (1644) and Naseby (1645) broke the Royalist cause. Charles surrendered, schemed for renewed war, and was finally captured.
Radicals in the army purged Parliament of moderates (leaving the "Rump Parliament"), tried the king for treason, and executed him in 1649. England was declared a republic: the Commonwealth.
The republic struggled. Cromwell crushed resistance in Ireland (the brutal sieges of Drogheda and Wexford, 1649) and Scotland, then grew frustrated with the squabbling Rump. In 1653 he dissolved it by force and became Lord Protector — a king in all but name, ruling under a written constitution (the Instrument of Government, England's only written constitution). The Protectorate enforced a stern Puritan moral order (theaters closed, Christmas festivities curtailed) and was, in practice, a military dictatorship.
Connection (irony): A revolution begun to limit one man's power ended by concentrating power in another. The lesson many English drew — that republics collapse into tyranny — would make them prize balanced government over pure popular rule. Watch this fear resurface in 1688.
When Cromwell died in 1658, his son Richard could not hold the regime together. The army and a war-weary nation wanted stability.
In 1660, Parliament invited Charles I's exiled son to return as Charles II (r. 1660–1685). The monarchy, the Anglican Church, and the House of Lords were all restored. Charles II was shrewd and pragmatic — he generally avoided open confrontation with Parliament ("I do not wish to go on my travels again," he reportedly said). But two problems festered: Charles had secret Catholic sympathies (and a secret treaty with Louis XIV, the Treaty of Dover, 1670), and his brother and heir, James, Duke of York, was openly Catholic.
In this period Parliament split into the first recognizable political factions: the Whigs (who tried to exclude the Catholic James from the succession) and the Tories (who defended hereditary right). The Habeas Corpus Act (1679) — guaranteeing that prisoners be brought before a court — dates from this struggle.
Charles II died in 1685; his brother became James II (r. 1685–1688). James moved fast and clumsily: he appointed Catholics to high office, suspended laws by royal decree (the Declaration of Indulgence), and prosecuted (and lost against) seven Anglican bishops who refused to read it. The English elite tolerated him only because his heirs were Protestant daughters. Then, in June 1688, his Catholic queen bore a son — raising the specter of a permanent Catholic dynasty.
Seven leading statesmen secretly invited William of Orange, the Dutch ruler and a champion of European Protestantism, who was married to James's Protestant daughter Mary. William landed with an army in November 1688. James's support evaporated; he fled to France (dropping the Great Seal in the Thames as he went). Because James abandoned the throne rather than fight a pitched battle, the transfer was nearly bloodless — hence "Glorious" (in England, though it provoked real war in Ireland and Scotland).
Parliament declared the throne vacant and offered it jointly to William III and Mary II (1689) — but on conditions.
The conditions were written into the English Bill of Rights (1689). It established that the monarch could not: - suspend laws or levy taxes without Parliament's consent, - maintain a standing army in peacetime without consent, or - interfere with parliamentary elections, free speech in Parliament, or the right to petition.
It also barred a Catholic from the throne and required frequent Parliaments. The crown now held power by parliamentary grant, not divine right. This is the birth of England's constitutional (limited) monarchy — sovereignty shared between Crown and Parliament, with Parliament supreme. The accompanying Toleration Act (1689) granted limited freedom of worship to most Protestant dissenters (not Catholics).
The Revolution needed a justification, and John Locke supplied the most enduring one in his Two Treatises of Government (published 1689). Locke argued that humans possess natural rights to "life, liberty, and property"; that legitimate government rests on the consent of the governed; and that government exists to protect those rights. When a ruler becomes a tyrant who violates them, the people retain the right of revolution — to dissolve that government and form a new one.
Connection (forward): Locke is the hinge between the seventeenth century and the modern world. His ideas pass directly into the Enlightenment (Lesson 8) and then into the American Declaration of Independence (1776) — "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" — and the French Revolution (1789) (Lesson 10). The English settlement of 1689 thus seeds the Atlantic revolutions of the next century.
The bottom line: In the same century that France perfected absolutism under Louis XIV, England built the opposite — a monarchy bound by law and Parliament. Two neighbors, one century, opposite answers to the central question of the age: where does sovereignty lie?
Source: An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown (the English Bill of Rights), enacted by Parliament, December 1689. (Authentic statute; wording below modernized in spelling. Verify exact phrasing against the official text.)
"That the pretended power of suspending of laws, or the execution of laws, by regal authority, without consent of Parliament, is illegal... That levying money for or to the use of the Crown by pretence of prerogative, without grant of Parliament... is illegal... That the raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with consent of Parliament, is against law... That election of members of Parliament ought to be free... That for redress of all grievances, and for the amending, strengthening and preserving of the laws, Parliaments ought to be held frequently."
HAPPY Analysis
What caused the conflict between Crown and Parliament?
Long-term causes: a centuries-old English tradition that the king could not tax without consent (Magna Carta, 1215); the strength of Parliament as an institution; and the religious fracture of the Reformation, which left Puritans suspicious of any drift toward Catholicism or ceremony.
Short-term causes: the Stuarts' insistence on divine-right absolutism; Charles I's illegal taxation during the Personal Rule; the Scottish rebellion that forced him to recall Parliament in 1640; and, in 1688, the birth of a Catholic heir to James II, which converted a tolerable problem into an intolerable one.
Comparison: England vs. France in one century. This is the heart of the LEQ that follows.
| France (Louis XIV) | England (post-1689) | |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereignty | In the king alone ("L'état, c'est moi") | Shared; Parliament supreme |
| Taxation | Royal decree | Requires Parliament's consent |
| Nobility | Tamed at Versailles | Active in Parliament |
| Religion | "One king, one faith" (revokes Edict of Nantes, 1685) | Toleration Act (1689) for dissenters |
| Theory | Divine right (Bossuet) | Consent of governed (Locke) |
Same century, same problem — how to organize sovereign power after the chaos of religious war — and opposite solutions. France centralized; England constitutionalized. The exam loves this contrast because it isolates a single variable (the relationship between monarch and representative institution) across two comparable states.
1. English Civil War (1642–1651) ≠ Glorious Revolution (1688). These are different events, decades apart, with different stakes. The Civil War was a bloody, years-long war that executed a king (Charles I, 1649) and produced a republic. The Glorious Revolution was a nearly bloodless coup that replaced one king with another (James II → William and Mary) and produced a limited monarchy. Don't blend them into one "English revolution."
2. Cromwell's Commonwealth ≠ the Restoration. Cromwell's Commonwealth/Protectorate (1649–1660) was a Puritan republic/military dictatorship with no king. The Restoration (1660) brought the monarchy back under Charles II. Order matters: republic first, then restored monarchy.
3. Constitutional monarchy ≠ democracy. The 1689 settlement made Parliament supreme over the crown — but Parliament represented a tiny, propertied, male elite. Most English people still could not vote. "Limited monarchy" means the king is limited by law, not that the people rule. Democratic suffrage in Britain comes much later (Reform Acts of 1832, 1867, 1884 — Lesson 15).
4. Locke published in 1689, not during the Civil War. His Two Treatises justified the Glorious Revolution, not Cromwell's republic.
5. "Roundheads" were Parliamentarians; "Cavaliers" were Royalists. Easy to flip. Roundheads = Puritan haircut = Parliament. Cavaliers = courtly = King.
Question 1 is based on the following passage.
"That the pretended power of suspending of laws, or the execution of laws, by regal authority, without consent of Parliament, is illegal." — English Bill of Rights, 1689
1. B. The Bill of Rights establishes that the monarch cannot suspend laws "without consent of Parliament" — a parliamentary limit on royal power. (A) is the opposite; the document ends divine-right claims. (C) and (D) are unrelated; it was anti-Catholic and not democratic.
2. A. The principle that royal authority is limited by law and consent descends from Magna Carta (1215). (B) is the divine-right view the document rejects; (C) is France's opposite model; (D) is irrelevant.
3. C. The Bill of Rights was the condition on which Parliament offered the crown to William and Mary (1689). The execution of Charles I (A) was 1649; the Protectorate (B) and Restoration (D) predate the document.
Questions 4–5 are based on the following passage.
"Men being... by nature all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent... The great and chief end, therefore, of men's uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property." — John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 1689
4. B. Locke roots legitimate government in consent ("without his own consent"). (A) is the doctrine he refutes; (C) misreads him (he limits all power, including Parliament's, by natural rights); (D) is unrelated.
5. B. Locke's natural-rights and consent theory passed directly into the Declaration of Independence (1776) ("life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"). The others predate or are unrelated to Locke.
6. B. The Civil War's fundamental issue was sovereignty: monarch vs. Parliament — taxation, religion, and royal power all reduced to that question. Religion (A) was a major factor but not the whole; (C) and (D) are inaccurate.
7. B. Cromwell led the New Model Army and ruled as Lord Protector. (A) Louis XIV; (C) Locke; (D) Henry IV of France.
8. B. Charles I's execution (1649) was unprecedented: a reigning monarch tried and executed by his own subjects. The others are false.
9. C. Correct order: Civil War (1642–51) → Commonwealth (1649–60) → Restoration (1660) → Glorious Revolution (1688).
10. B. The birth of a Catholic male heir to James II (June 1688) raised the prospect of a permanent Catholic dynasty and triggered the invitation to William. (A) 1649; (C) 1658; (D) 1628.
11. C. The Glorious Revolution was relatively bloodless (in England) and produced a limited monarchy rather than a republic. (A), (B), (D) describe the Civil War or are false.
12. B. Unlike absolutist France, England limited royal power through Parliament. (A) describes France; (C) describes France's revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685); (D) is false after 1660.
13. A. The Restoration (1660) brought back the Stuart monarchy under Charles II. (B) precedes it; (C) is 1689; (D) is the sixteenth century.
14. B. The settlement of 1688–89 created a constitutional monarchy with parliamentary supremacy — not a democracy (A), not absolutism (C), not Catholic (D).
15. B. Cavaliers = Royalists; Roundheads = Parliamentarians. (Memory aid: Roundhead = Puritan haircut = Parliament.)
Directions (AP format): You have 40 minutes. Develop an argument that responds to the prompt with a defensible thesis, contextualization, specific evidence, and reasoning. (On the real exam you would choose one of three options; here is a single comparison prompt.)
LEQ Prompt: Evaluate the extent to which the development of the English state in the period c. 1640–1689 differed from the development of the French state in the same period.
This is a comparison prompt (Skill 5). You must analyze both similarities and differences and make a defensible argument about the extent of the difference.
"Although both England and France in the mid-to-late seventeenth century sought to resolve the disorder of the religious wars by strengthening central authority, they developed in fundamentally opposite directions: France under Louis XIV concentrated sovereignty in an absolute monarch claiming divine right, whereas England, through the Civil War and Glorious Revolution, subordinated the crown to Parliament and established a constitutional monarchy grounded in the consent of the governed. The difference was therefore profound — not merely of degree but of the underlying principle of where sovereignty lay."
(Why it scores: it is defensible, establishes a line of reasoning, acknowledges a similarity (the shared goal of order/central authority) before asserting the difference, and answers "to what extent.")
Contextualization (1 paragraph): Set the scene in the broader seventeenth century — the destruction of the Thirty Years' War (ended 1648, Treaty of Westphalia), widespread mid-century crises and rebellions (the French Fronde, 1648–1653; the English Civil War), and the shared European problem of how to build stable, sovereign states after decades of religious war. Both monarchs reacted against aristocratic and religious disorder.
Body Paragraph 1 — The shared goal (the similarity): Both states pursued stronger, more centralized authority. Louis XIV tamed the nobility at Versailles and used intendants to centralize administration. England, too, built strong central institutions (Cromwell's New Model Army; a powerful Parliament; an expanding fiscal-military state after 1689). Concede this to set up the contrast.
Body Paragraph 2 — France: absolutism. Evidence: Louis XIV's "divine right" (theorized by Bishop Bossuet); "L'état, c'est moi"; Versailles as a tool to control nobles; revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) ("one king, one law, one faith"); taxation by royal decree; Estates-General never summoned. Sovereignty resides in the king alone.
Body Paragraph 3 — England: constitutionalism. Evidence: the Petition of Right (1628); execution of Charles I (1649); the Glorious Revolution (1688); the English Bill of Rights (1689) (no taxation, no standing army, no suspending laws without Parliament); the Toleration Act (1689); Locke's consent theory. Sovereignty resides in Parliament, with the crown bound by law.
Analysis & Reasoning: Drive home that the contrast turns on a single variable — the relationship between monarch and representative institution. France suppressed its representative body; England empowered its. Same century, same problem, opposite solutions.
Complexity: Earn the complexity point with nuance, e.g.: (a) England's "constitutional" monarchy was not democratic — power lay with a propertied elite, so the contrast with France is one of institutional structure, not popular rule; OR (b) note that England's path was contingent (had James II had no son, no invitation to William; had Louis faced a stronger Parlement, France might have differed) — comparing the causes as well as the outcomes; OR (c) acknowledge continuities — both states grew more powerful and fiscally capable, so the divergence was in the locus of sovereignty, not in state strength as such.
| Point | What earns it | Common point-loss |
|---|---|---|
| Thesis (1) | A defensible claim that responds to the prompt and establishes a line of reasoning (here, that the difference was fundamental, of principle not degree). | Restating the prompt; listing without an argument; a thesis that only addresses one country. |
| Contextualization (1) | Describe a broader context (Thirty Years' War / Westphalia 1648; the general mid-century crisis; post-religious-war state-building). | A single vague sentence; "throughout history" openers; context unrelated to the comparison. |
| Evidence (2) | 1 pt: two+ specific, relevant facts. 2nd pt: use that evidence to support the argument about the comparison. Cite both countries: Edict of Nantes revocation (1685) and Bill of Rights (1689), etc. | Evidence for only one country; correct facts that aren't tied to the thesis; vague references ("Louis was powerful"). |
| Analysis & Reasoning (1) | Use the comparison reasoning process: explain both a similarity and a difference and why they matter. | Describing each country separately with no actual comparison ("two essays stapled together"). |
| Complexity (1) | Demonstrate nuance: qualify the comparison (constitutional ≠ democratic), analyze causation/contingency, or address counter-evidence. Must be woven through, not a tacked-on sentence. | Attempting complexity in one throwaway line; over-claiming ("England was a full democracy"). |
Total: 6 points.
Most common ways students lose points on a comparison LEQ: - Writing two separate descriptions instead of comparing (kills the Analysis point). - Discussing only differences and ignoring the shared goal of central authority (weakens "extent" and complexity). - Anachronism — claiming England became "democratic" in 1689 (factually wrong; undercuts complexity). - Thin evidence on one side (usually England gets covered, France gets shortchanged, or vice versa).
1. B. The Bill of Rights establishes that the monarch cannot suspend laws "without consent of Parliament" — a parliamentary limit on royal power. (A) is the opposite; the document ends divine-right claims. (C) and (D) are unrelated; it was anti-Catholic and not democratic.
2. A. The principle that royal authority is limited by law and consent descends from Magna Carta (1215). (B) is the divine-right view the document rejects; (C) is France's opposite model; (D) is irrelevant.
3. C. The Bill of Rights was the condition on which Parliament offered the crown to William and Mary (1689). The execution of Charles I (A) was 1649; the Protectorate (B) and Restoration (D) predate the document.
4. B. Locke roots legitimate government in consent ("without his own consent"). (A) is the doctrine he refutes; (C) misreads him (he limits all power, including Parliament's, by natural rights); (D) is unrelated.
5. B. Locke's natural-rights and consent theory passed directly into the Declaration of Independence (1776) ("life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"). The others predate or are unrelated to Locke.
6. B. The Civil War's fundamental issue was sovereignty: monarch vs. Parliament — taxation, religion, and royal power all reduced to that question. Religion (A) was a major factor but not the whole; (C) and (D) are inaccurate.
7. B. Cromwell led the New Model Army and ruled as Lord Protector. (A) Louis XIV; (C) Locke; (D) Henry IV of France.
8. B. Charles I's execution (1649) was unprecedented: a reigning monarch tried and executed by his own subjects. The others are false.
9. C. Correct order: Civil War (1642–51) → Commonwealth (1649–60) → Restoration (1660) → Glorious Revolution (1688).
10. B. The birth of a Catholic male heir to James II (June 1688) raised the prospect of a permanent Catholic dynasty and triggered the invitation to William. (A) 1649; (C) 1658; (D) 1628.
11. C. The Glorious Revolution was relatively bloodless (in England) and produced a limited monarchy rather than a republic. (A), (B), (D) describe the Civil War or are false.
12. B. Unlike absolutist France, England limited royal power through Parliament. (A) describes France; (C) describes France's revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685); (D) is false after 1660.
13. A. The Restoration (1660) brought back the Stuart monarchy under Charles II. (B) precedes it; (C) is 1689; (D) is the sixteenth century.
14. B. The settlement of 1688–89 created a constitutional monarchy with parliamentary supremacy — not a democracy (A), not absolutism (C), not Catholic (D).
15. B. Cavaliers = Royalists; Roundheads = Parliamentarians. (Memory aid: Roundhead = Puritan haircut = Parliament.)
See the model thesis, outline, evidence, and rubric in section (g). A top response (6/6) will: state a defensible thesis answering "to what extent"; contextualize within the post–Thirty Years' War crisis; deploy specific evidence for both France (divine right, Versailles, revocation of the Edict of Nantes 1685) and England (execution of Charles I 1649, Glorious Revolution 1688, Bill of Rights 1689, Locke); explicitly compare (similarity of goal, difference of outcome) rather than describe separately; and earn complexity by qualifying that English constitutionalism was elite, not democratic, or by analyzing the contingency of each path.
EuroIQ · Lesson 6 of 25 · Period 2 · Unit 3 — Absolutism & Constitutionalism
This lesson is exam-preparation material and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the College Board. AP and Advanced Placement are registered trademarks of the College Board. Dates, names, and quotations are presented for educational purposes; primary-source excerpts have been modernized in spelling and should be checked against authoritative editions. Content pending external history review.