As an offset to these Declarations, Parliament now passed the Toleration Act, 1689, which secured freedom of worship to all religious believers except “Papists and such as deny the Trinity.”  This measure, though one-sided and utterly inconsistent with the broader and juster ideas of toleration which have since prevailed, was nevertheless a most important reform.  It put an end at once and forever to the persecution which had disgraced the reigns of the Stuarts, though unfortunately it still left the Catholics, the Unitarians, and the Jews subject to the heavy hand of tyrannical oppression,[1] and they remained so for many years (SS573, 599).

[1] In 1663 Charles granted a charter to Rhode Island which secured religious liberty to that colony.  It was the first royal charter recognizing the principle of toleration.

497.  The Bill of Rights, 1689, and Act of Settlement, 1701.

Not many months later, Parliament embodied the Declaration of Right (S494), with some slight changes, in the Bill of Rights, 1689,[2] which received the signature of the King and became law.  It constitutes the third and last great step which England has taken in making anything like a formal WRITTEN Constitution,[3]—­the first being Magna Carta, or the Great Charter (S199), and the second the Petition of Right (S432).  The Habeas Corpus Act (S482) was contained, in germ at least, in Magna Carta (S199 (2)); hence these three measures, namely, Magna Carta, 1215; the Petition of Right, 1628; and the Bill of Rights, 1689 (including the Act of Settlement to be mentioned presently), sum up the written safeguards of the nation, and constitute, as Lord Chatham said, “The Bible of English Liberty.”

[2] See Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p. xxii, S25, and p. xxxi. [3] It should be borne in mind that a large part of the English Constitution is based on ancient customs or unwritten laws, and another part on acts of Parliament passed for specific purposes.

With the passage of the Bill of Rights,[4] the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings to govern without being accountable to their subjects (SS419, 429), which James I and his descendants had tried so hard to reduce to practice, came to an end forever.

[4] For summary of the bill, see Constitutional Documents in the Appendix, p. xxxi.  For the complete text, see Taswell-Langmead’s “Constitutional History of England” or Lee’s “Source Book of English History.”

The chief provisions of the Bill of Rights were: 
  (1) That the King should not maintain a standing army in time of
peace, except by consent of Parliament.
  (2) That no money should be taken from the people save by the
consent of Parliament.
  (3) That every subject has the right to petition the Crown for the
redress of any grievance.
  (4) That the election of members of Parliament ought to be free from
interference.
  (5) That Parliament should frequently assemble and enjoy entire
freedom of debate.
  (6) That the King be debarred from interfering in any way with the
proper execution of the laws.
  (7) That a Roman Catholic or a person marrying a Roman Catholic be
henceforth incapable of receiving the crown of England.