370 A BRIEF SURVEY OF HUMAN HISTORY

regime (of Charles II and James II), however, showed that
the English monarchy could not be its old self any longer.
The Glorious Revolution of 1688 which enthroned the Dutch
William III on the Bill of Rights transferred sovereignty from
the Crown to the Whig oligarchy. " The new monarch and
liis successors, since they owed their throne to an Act of
Parliament, were clearly devoid of any Divine Right to do
what Parliament chose to consider wrong. Yet even so, it
may be doubted (says Somervell) if our extraordinary
system, whereby kings reign but do not govern, would have
established itself if the crown had not been worn in succes-
sion by a Dutchman, a woman, two Germans, a king who
-went mad, a worn-out debauchee, an eccentric, and another
woman."1

The later history of England belongs to another chapter.
Here we must refer only to one more landmark in the transi-
tion from the Old to the New. George III (1760-1820) was.
the Hereward the Wake of the Grand Monarchy. The last
"hopes of the ancient regime were extinguished when George
III was made to realise that he could not " be a King";
that he could only reign, but not rule. The close of the
•eighteenth century in England demonstrated not only that
the King could not carry on merely depending pn his
"friends," but also that no country could rule another
.against its will.

The climacteric of the Grand Monarchy in Europe was,
however, the outbreak of the French Revolution (1789).
In its flames was extinguished the Old Order, not merely in
France but in most countries of Europe; not merely in the
political field but in almost all departments of life. Des-
pite Edmund Burke's declamation against it, the French

1. D. C. Somervdl, A History of England, p. 50.