Are king William and Mary absolute monarchs. And how and why if they are or if they aren't.?

Question

Are king William and Mary absolute monarchs. And how and why? Thanks =) This is from 1688 by the way.

Answer 1

Maybe you don't mean 'absolute' but just 'equal'. Mary was Queen of England and William was prince of Holland and King of Ireland and Scotland. So they married each other and were monarchs of their respective countries hence being equal King and Queen.

Answer 2

No, parliment was enacted back in 1215 with the Magna Carta. And the great thing that came out of them is the public ivy, College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA.

Answer 3

No. King Charles I tried that and he had his head chopped off on 30 January 1649 at the climax of the English Civil War. In December 1689 when Mary II of England was crowned Queen, Parliament passed one of the most important constitutional documents in English history, the Bill of Rights. This measure — which restated and confirmed many provisions of the earlier Declaration of Right — established restrictions on the royal prerogative; it declared, amongst other things, that the Sovereign could not suspend laws passed by Parliament, levy taxes without parliamentary consent, infringe the right to petition, raise a standing army during peacetime without parliamentary consent, deny the right to bear arms to Protestant subjects, unduly interfere with parliamentary elections, punish members of either House of Parliament for anything said during debates, require excessive bail or inflict cruel or unusual punishments. The Bill of Rights also addressed the question of succession to the Throne.

Answer 4

First of all, an Act of Parliament removed Mary's father, James II, from the throne and gave it to them.  A monarch who depends on a representative body for his/her authority clearly cannot be absolute.  Even Henry VIII in the 16th century could not go against an Act of Parliament (so he contrived to influence Parliament to do his bidding), and Charles I, when he marched into Parliament with armed troops, had to withdraw in the face of an Act hastily passed in his presence.  So by 1688 it was well established that Parliament made the laws, to which all, even the monarch, would be subject.  The monarchy at this stage still had the administrative authority, which would be lost in the Hanover period to the prime minister's cabinet.

Answer 5

Hello,

No,

Absolute Monarchy vanished from England in 1647 when Lord Protector Cromwell had Charles I beheaded after the English Civil War. For a time under Cromwell's watch England was a republic but after his death the people wanted a monarchy back but it was brought back with drastically reduced powers never to be absolute again.

Mike