In so providing, the Bill of Rights emphasized the bearing of arms as an individual prerogative divorced from any collective duty. Given that societies were becoming more regulated and more characterized by divisions of labor, the provision stands as something of an anomaly. The historical context explains the shift.
In 1660, Charles II was restored to the British throne after a decade of Purtian rule. Of a“merrie” disposition, Charles was at first indifferent to the equal restoration of Anglicanism as the “established” religion. (Statutes of Clarendon (1661 1665).) Later in his reign, however, he removed legal discriminations against Catholicism and, upon his death without issue, James II assumed the throne.
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| James II |
While Charles II may have been secretly Catholic he took pains to appear neutral and famously kept both a Protestant and a Catholic whore. James II was frankly Catholic and kept no whores. There ensued both a hot and cold war between James II and his Protestant subjects. After repressing a Protestant revolt, James enlarged his standing army and thus reinforced, began a policy of de facto tolerance of Catholics. This brought him into de jure conflict with a Protestant Parliament. In defense of what we would call religious freedom, James asserted the right to overrule Parliament and, in 1688, promulgated the Declaration of Indulgence giving Catholic and Dissenters political rights.
Protestant England grit its teeth and withheld from rebellion. James’ only issue was Mary, who was safely Protestant. Alas, in 1688, James gave birth to a son whom we vowed to raise as a Catholic. The dye was cast at the baptismal fount and Protestant England revolted. The Glorious Revolution dethroned James, enthroned Mary and her Dutch husband William, re-established the Church of England and relegated Catholics to the back of the bus for another 250 years.
The reign of James the Second epitomizes the equivocal nature of tyranny. To some, he was a champion of religous freedom. To others, he was the enemy of representative democracy. He was, in fact, both. But whether or not one agrees with his specific policies, he was indisputably a tyrant - that is, one who seeks to rule in excess of his appointed jurisdiction.
For 135 years, what was to become the united kingdoms of Great Britain had struggled politically and militarily to reach an accomodation between Catholicism and Calvinism, between mercantile Town and agricultural Country, between modern absolutism and medieval autonomies. The modulated balance between these oppositions is known in English history as “The Settlement”. It was all a little bit of everything stitched together under a tissue of rhetoric and illogic.
While never doing anything quite completely “illegal,” James was undermining a consensus which had taken several beheadings and a civil war to achieve. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 sent James packing and restored the balance.
But restoring the balance was not something that could be achieved politically, precisely because under James II’s “over-rulings” politics had broken down. Thus, whereas in 1081 the principle purpose of owning a weapon was tied to defence against foreign aggression in 1688 it became tied as well to the goal of preventing domestic tyranny.
It is a pity that Americans are by and large so unaware of English history, because the American insurrectionists always maintained that they were simply claiming their rights as Englishmen and it can fairly be said that the U.S. Constitution of 1789 is, in its fundamental contours, a restatement of the The Settlement of 1689.
Because the Colonies were founded by an outlflow of Dissenters and Catholics, the Constitution added the salient distinction of the First Amendment’s anti establishment clause; otherwise the Constitutuion simply dressed up the English statu quo ante in republican garb governed by an indirectly elected president with precisely the powers of a constitutional monarch for a term.
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