Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/487

 Struggle in England between King and Parliament 363 V. ENGLAND AFTER THE REVOLUTION OF 1688 622. Questions settled by the Accession of William and Mary. With the accession of William and Mary, in 1688, Eng- land may be said to have practically settled the two great ques- tions that had produced such serious dissensions during the previous fifty years. In the first place, the nation had clearly shown that it proposed to remain Protestant, and the relations between the Church of England and the Dissenters were gradu- ally being satisfactorily adjusted. In the second place, the powers of the king had been carefully defined, and from the opening of the eighteenth century to the present time no English monarch has ventured to veto an act of Parliament. 1 623. The Union of England and Scotland (1707). William III was succeeded in 1702 by his sister-in-law, Anne, a younger daughter of James II. Far more important than the War of the Spanish Succession, which her generals carried on against Louis XIV, was the final union of England and Scotland. The two countries had been under the same ruler since the accession of James I, but each had maintained its own independent parlia- ment and system of government. Finally, in 1707, both nations agreed to unite their governments into one. Forty-five members of the British House of Commons were to be chosen thereafter in Scotland, and sixteen Scotch lords were to be added to the Eng- lish House of Lords. In this way the whole island of Great Britain was placed under a single government, and the occasions for strife were thereby greatly reduced. 624. Accession of George I (1714-1727) of Hanover. Since none of Anne's children survived her, she was succeeded, accord- ing to an arrangement made before her accession, by the nearest Protestant heir. This was the son of James I's granddaughter Sophia. She had married the elector of Hanover 2 ; consequently 1 The last instance in which an English ruler vetoed a measure passed by Parliament was in 1707. 2 Originally there had been seven electors, but the duke of Bavaria had been made an elector during the Thirty Years' War, and in 1692 the father of George I had been permitted to assume the title of " elector of Hanover."