William Tyler
1688/1776: Britain and America Divided by Constitution
Summary
William Tyler discusses the two revolutions and the two resulting constitutions that were created in Britain and America. He explains how we got to the revolutions in the first place as well as the similarities and differences in the constitutions.
William Tyler
William Tyler has spent his entire professional life in adult education, beginning at Kingsgate College in 1969. He has lectured widely for many public bodies, including the University of Cambridge and the WEA, in addition to speaking to many clubs and societies. In 2009, William was awarded the MBE for services to adult education, and he has previously been a scholar in residence at the London Jewish Cultural Centre.
Anything in Britain can be done by a parliamentary majority. We got rid of a king, Edward VIII, in pretty well 24 hours. If we wanted to get rid of the queen, it would be very easy to do, but both in Britain and America in the 21st century, parliament or congress could not do something which was opposed by a huge body of the population. They simply couldn’t do it, and so I think the danger of that is limited. If however, the opinion in Britain was to get rid of the monarchy, perhaps when the queen dies, and Parliament was to pass it, well yes.
Oh, that’s a nice question I can answer. Because Mary was legitimate in the sense that she was the daughter of the first marriage of James II to a lady called Ann Hyde, and she, that is to say Mary, was brought up as a Protestant. So William’s claim to the throne, if you want to put it like that, is legitimized by Mary ruling with him. In reality, William made all the decisions. It was a love match, despite William’s odd sexuality, I always feel really sorry. If any of you visit Holland, by the way, go to the royal palace there and you can see a lot of stuff about Mary.
Because that’s the way we had governed ourselves, with a monarch and a parliament, since the 13th century. It was the normal order of things, and as I think I said last week, the English are very traditional in the way they look at things. We like precedent, precedent is what we like. We didn’t want a republic.