Convention Parliament

The English Parliament summoned without a royal writ in 1689, which declared James II had abdicated and offered the crown to William III and Mary II.

Abdication of James II: The Convention Parliament's declaration that James II had abandoned the government by fleeing England in 1688. This legal fiction supplied the vacancy on which the new monarchy rested.
Glorious Revolution: The 1688–1689 overthrow of James II and establishment of William III and Mary II as monarchs in England. It created the crisis that prompted the Convention Parliament's assembly and settlement.
English constitutional monarchy: A system in which the English monarch's authority operates within legal and parliamentary limits. The settlement strengthened the principle that monarchy could be conditioned by Parliament.
Cavalier Parliament: The English Parliament elected in 1661 that supported Charles II and sat until 1679. Unlike the Convention, it was summoned under an established monarch and royal authority.
Declaration of Right: The 1689 statement of grievances and principles presented to William and Mary before their accession to the English throne. It recorded the conditions under which the Convention Parliament offered them the crown.
James II of England: King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1685 until his overthrow in 1688. His flight and disputed departure from government became the Convention's central constitutional question.
Parliamentary sovereignty: The doctrine that Parliament has supreme legal authority within the constitutional order of the United Kingdom. The Convention's claim to settle the crown helped establish Parliament's authority over succession.
Rump Parliament: The reduced English Parliament that remained after Pride's Purge in 1648 and governed during the Commonwealth. It also claimed authority amid a breakdown of monarchy, but arose from military purges rather than a succession crisis.
Bill of Rights 1689: An English statute limiting royal powers and affirming parliamentary rights after the Glorious Revolution. The Convention Parliament's settlement was given statutory force through this act.
Williamite invasion of England: The 1688 military expedition by William of Orange that led to James II's overthrow. The invasion drove the political events that made a new parliamentary settlement necessary.

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