10.6092/issn.1974-4382/16275
My paper takes as its focus the semantic variation of the pre-modifying adjectives happy and glorious which resulted from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the subsequent triumphal representation of Britain as a champion of freedom and emancipation. By adopting principles of corpus-assisted discourse studies (Stubbs 2001; Partington 2004), I shall examine the collocational patterns of the two lexical items in the British periodical press, covering the period from 1620 to 1789. Before the Glorious Revolution the meaning of the two premodifiers appears consistent with the definitions provided in the OED but from 1688 onwards changes in the phraseology affect their semantics. In particular, after the Revolution, happy and glorious show a semantic preference for words referring to liberty and (universal) rights which enriches their meaning with a sense of freedom from oppression and corruption. Given that the two adjectives already had a positive meaning, the libertarian semantics acquired after 1688 can be interpreted as a further amelioration in the direction of liberalism and, at the end of the century, Enlightened universalism. In order to investigate the changing semantics of the two adjectives throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, I shall make use of the Florence Early English Newspapers Corpus (1620-1649), the Lancaster Newsbooks Corpus (1653-1654), the Zurich English Newspaper Corpus (1671, 1681, 1691) and the British Newspaper Archive for the period from 1700 to 1789.
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The changing semantics of <em>happy</em> and <em>glorious</em> after the English Revolution of 1688: A corpus-assisted discourse study
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Elisabetta Cecconi
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10.6092/issn.1974-4382/16275
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Università di Firenze
1974-4382
17th-and 18th-century British press
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The changing semantics of <em>happy</em> and <em>glorious</em> after the English Revolution of 1688: A corpus-assisted discourse study
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37
                                                                         mediAzioni 37 (2023)
                                                                               ISSN   1974-4382


    THE CHANGING SEMANTICS OF HAPPY AND GLORIOUS
         AFTER THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF 1688:
           A CORPUS-ASSISTED DISCOURSE STUDY

                                        ELISABETTA CECCONI
                                       UNIVERSITÀ DI FIRENZE

elisabetta.cecconi@unifi.it


Citation: Cecconi Elisabetta (2023) “The changing semantics of happy and glorious after
the English revolution of 1688: A corpus-assisted discourse study”, mediAzioni 37: A78-
A99, https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1974-4382/16275, ISSN 1974-4382.



Abstract: My paper centres on the semantic variation of the pre-modifying adjectives
happy and glorious which resulted from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the
subsequent triumphal representation of Britain as a champion of freedom and
emancipation1. By adopting principles of corpus-assisted discourse studies (Stubbs 2001;
Partington 2004), I shall examine the collocational patterns of the two lexical items in
the British periodical press, covering the period from 1620 to 1789. Before the Glorious
Revolution the meaning of the two premodifiers appears consistent with the definitions
provided in the OED, but from 1688 onwards changes in the phraseology affect their
semantics. In particular, after the Revolution, happy and glorious show a semantic
preference for words referring to liberty and (universal) rights which enriches their
meaning with a sense of freedom from oppression and corruption. Given that the two
adjectives already had a positive meaning, the libertarian semantics acquired after 1688
can be interpreted as a further amelioration in the direction of liberalism and, at the
end of the century, Enlightened universalism. In order to investigate the changing
semantics of the two adjectives throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, I shall make use
of the Florence Early English Newspapers Corpus (1620-1649), the Lancaster Newsbooks
Corpus (1653-1654), the Zurich English Newspaper Corpus (1671, 1681, 1691) and the
British Newspaper Archive for the period from 1700 to 1789.

Keywords: happy; glorious; semantic preference; collocation; monarchy; people; well-
being; liberalism; Glorious Revolution; 17th- and 18th-century British press.




1
 For a historical introduction to the causes and consequences of the Glorious Revolution, see
Pincus (2009), Vallance (2013), and Wilson (2014).

Copyright © 2023
The text in this work is licensed under CC-BY 4.0.                                         A78
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1. Introduction

After the Revolution of 1688, the British press saw an explosion of libertarian
rhetoric which impacted on the semantics of existing words. In particular, two
positive adjectives, i.e. happy and glorious – whose attestation in the OED dates
back to the 14th century – were singled out by contemporaries to celebrate the
Revolution of 1688 and give rise to a new self-perception of England as champion
of liberties and rights, as data will later show (Wilson 2014). In my analysis I
shall examine the collocational behaviour of the two pre-modifying adjectives in
the 17th- and 18th-century British press in order to track their semantic evolution
and relate it to specific historical and socio-political contexts before and after the
Revolution.
     Although the motivation behind the Parliament’s call for William of Orange
to occupy the throne of England was more restorative than revolutionary
(Kenyon 1972; Dickinson 1977; Clark 1986; Jones 1992), both the Whigs and
the Tories who signed the invitation letter put a basic libertarian principle into
practice: that governments exist and operate for the benefit of the governed, and
not of the rulers, and are equally bound by the rule of Law (Jones 1992: 52).
This was a fundamental point which had been repeatedly undermined under the
early Stuarts’ absolute monarchies and during the failed experiment of the
Cromwellian Republic. Even the more cautionary attitude of Charles II during
the Restoration was not sufficient to solve the controversies between Crown and
Parliament and with the accession of the overtly Catholic James II, times were
ripe for bringing about the end of the Stuart dynasty. Not only did the
parliamentary manoeuvre of 1688 mark a shift from absolute monarchy to
constitutional monarchy but, more importantly, it established the ruling power
of Parliament over the king.
     The uprising of 1745, representing the last attempt to restore the Catholic
Stuart dynasty to the throne of England, shook, although for a short time, the
stability of the monarchical apparatus and stimulated the revival of anti-Catholic
and libertarian rhetoric. By and large, while in the 1750s and 1760s Tories and
Whigs reached some kind of consensus on the fact that the settlement which had
followed the Glorious Revolution guaranteed political rights for the people
(Wilson 1992: 322; Hermann 2015: 331), the end of the 18th century saw the
resurgence of a radical rhetoric stimulated by the new configuration of élite
politics under George III. Radicals strategically appropriated the Glorious
Revolution as a reference point for the acknowledgement of natural rights of
mankind in more expansive terms than those sanctioned by the revolutionaries
of 1688. The right of the people was not just to canvass affairs of the State but
to effect political transformation (Wilson 1992: 334)2.
     Within this hectic socio-political and cultural context, my analysis aims to
establish to what extent the new collocational patterns in which the adjectives
happy and glorious occurred from 1688 affected their traditional meaning. The
2
  What social categories are included in the label “the people” is still unclear. According to
Wilson, opposition spokesmen employed a political definition of the people “appealing to those
men who were able to maintain their independence against both ministerial patronage and wages
and who possessed sufficient ‘public spirit’ to resist the former” (Wilson 1992: 319).
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choice of the adjectives is due to the fact that both were used to refer to the
Revolution of 1688 (Wilson 2014). Besides, both are present in the patriotic song
“God Save the King” which in the 19th century came to be known as the national
anthem. The song has a history of propagandistic appropriation on the part of
Williamites and Jacobites in the 18th century, which reveals the complexity of
the historical period examined. Early versions of the lyrics date back to Jacobite
drinking songs which were written in support of James II, although the song
became famous when it was performed for the first time in London in 1745 in
support of King George II after his defeat at Prestopans by the Young Pretender,
Charles Edward Stewart (Sutherland and Fender 2010).
    In order to track the semantic variation of the positive adjectives
diachronically, my analysis encompasses a wide time span which goes from 1620
to 1789 and investigates the words in their socio-political and textual contexts
of usage by adopting electronic archives and specialized corpora of 17 th- and
18th-century weekly pamphlets and newspapers. Given that lexicography is
focused on the investigation and recording of all aspects of lexical meaning (Šorli
2013), corpus linguistics can provide a valuable tool for retrieving recurrent
patterns in which the words appear across a considerable amount of data.
    In the following sections, first I present the data and the methodology used
and then I report on the quantitative distribution of happy and glorious in the 17th
and 18th century. For each adjective, I examine its collocational patterns and the
way they affect its meaning and associations in different historical periods using
a qualitative approach. The final section contains concluding remarks about the
impact that the Revolution of 1688 had on the meaning of the two pre-modifying
adjectives.


2. Data

In my study of happy and glorious, I have made use of three electronic news
corpora and one online news archive. The three electronic corpora are the
Florence Early English Newspapers Corpus (FEEN), the Lancaster Newsbooks Corpus
(LNC), and the Zurich English Newspaper Corpus (ZEN). The FEEN corpus covers
the period from the beginning of periodical news in 1620 until 1649. It consists
of 256,000 words and is subdivided into six sub-corpora of selected texts which
are meant to represent different aspects of periodical publication in those
decades.
    The LNC corpus is different in size and focus from the FEEN corpus, as it
includes a larger number of newsbooks over a short time span. In particular, it
covers the period from 1653 until the end of May 1654. For my analysis I adopted
the website version (https://cqpweb.lancs.ac.uk/lnc1654/) which is restricted to
the period from January to May 1654 and amounts to 988,000 tokens. The third
corpus that has been queried, the ZEN corpus, contains a variety of periodical
English newspapers, selected in 10-year intervals from 1671 until 1791. For my
research, I examined numbers in the corpus from 1671, 1681, 1691 and 1701
amounting to 250,000 words. For the 17th century, my analysis presents a
temporal gap between 1650 and 1670 (with the exception of the year 1654),
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which is due to the discontinuity in the time span covered by the three corpora.
The two decades include the period of the Commonwealth in Britain (1649-
1660), where the use of a libertarian semantics in all probability increased as a
result of Cromwell’s liberation of Britain from the so-called popish absolutism of
the Stuarts. This gap in the data has to be borne in mind when analysing the 17 th-
century usage of the two adjectives as further research could pinpoint a change
in the semantics of happy and glorious already in the period of the Interregnum
(1649-1660).
    For the 18th century, I consulted the online British Newspaper Archive (BNA)
which thanks to its continuity of data throughout the century allows for a
homogeneous division into three sub-periods of 30 years each. Period 1 stretches
from 1700 to 1729, period 2 goes from 1730 to 1759 and period 3 from 1760 to
1789. The archive contains provincial newspapers from England, Ireland,
Scotland and Wales. The British provincial newspapers cited in the course of the
analysis feature a Williamite stance, especially during the period of the Jacobite
Rebellion of 1745-17463. This is also the case for those newspapers which
generally opted for political neutrality (i.e. Newcastle Gazette, Ipswich Journal,
Kentish Weekly Post and the Oxford Journal) and for those papers in the opposition
camp which steered towards a “forced” loyalism at the height of the crisis (i.e.
Newcastle Courant). As Harris observed (1995: 16), the impression created by
most provincial newspapers was of a nation of defiant loyalists, although some
differences emerged in the readiness and vigour with which editors offered
succour to the Hanoverian monarchy.


3. Methodology

In my analysis I followed the principles of corpus-assisted discourse studies
(CADS). The term was originally coined by Partington (2004) on the basis of
previous works by Stubbs (1996; 2001). This model of analysis combines a
quantitative approach – i.e. statistical overviews of large numbers of tokens of
the discourse type under study contained in a corpus and queried through
concordancing software – and a qualitative approach typical of discourse
analysis which takes into consideration language usage not only in the co-text
but also in the wider socio-cultural and historical context of text-production and
reception (Baker 2006: 17-18; Partington et al. 2013: 11). In this respect, my
study adopts a multilayered notion of context which includes “textual contexts
as well as sociohistorical conditions of text production with its societal,
situational, historical, ideological and material sides” (Pahta and Taavitsainen
2010: 587). This contextual opening enables me to account for the socio-political
and cultural motivations which triggered the semantic evolution of the two
adjectives in terms of an extension of their meaning.

3
  Occasionally some newspapers could be instructed to publish articles with a Jacobite stance.
This is the case of the Scottish newspaper Caledonian Mercury which in 1745, by request of the
so-called Young Pretender, Charles Edward Stuart, published the minutes of the 1695
Parliamentary enquiry into the Glencoe Massacre, commonly exploited as an example of post-
1688 oppression (see Hopkins 2021).
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    One important concept in corpus linguistics is that of collocation, that is to
say, “how any particular word or expression co-occurs with other words or
sequences of words with a particular frequency” (Partington 2011: 35). As
Hunston explains, “where the co-occurrence is not with one or two words but
with a range that nonetheless can be interpreted as belonging to the set, the
relationship between the node and the set is termed ‘semantic preference’”
(2011: 56). In Stubbs’ words, an item shows semantic preference when “it co-
occurs or collocates with a set of semantically related words" (Stubbs 2001: 88).
The two concepts – collocation and semantic preference – will be used in the
course of my analysis in order to assess, through a close reading of concordances,
possible changes in the collocational behaviour of the two adjectives and discuss
the resulting variation of their meaning/associations in relation to the co-text
and to the wider historical context. Data have been analysed through the corpus
query     processor     contained      in     the    Lancaster    CQP      website
(https://cqpweb.lancs.ac.uk/lnc1654/), through the query system inside the
ZEN corpus website (http://es-zenonline.uzh.ch/) and through the search
options for words and exact collocates available in the advanced search tool of
the BNA website (https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/).


4. Frequency and distribution of happy and glorious

Table 1 below reports the frequency and distribution of the adjectives happy and
glorious in the three 17th-century corpora (i.e. FEEN, LNC and ZEN) in relation to
the total number of words contained in each corpus. Table 2, on the other hand,
shows the frequency and distribution of happy and glorious in the three sub-
periods of BNA in relation to the number of articles uploaded for each period
(accessed August 2023)4. Table 1 and Table 2 also include the frequency of the
pre-modified nouns (R1) of the two adjectives, which is calculated in relation to
the number of occurrences of happy and glorious for each sub-period. The pre-
modified nouns presented in the tables have a frequency equal or superior to
0,5%.
     A comparison between the occurrences of happy and glorious in Table 1 and
in Table 2 shows that happy is much more frequent than glorious throughout the
period examined.




4
 BNA does not provide the total number of tokens uploaded for each year or decade. So, it is not
possible to compare the results throughout the 17th- and 18th-century data. We can only assess
the distribution of the adjective within the three corpora for the 17th century and within BNA for
the 18th century, separately. This is also the case for the analysis of glorious.
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     Table 1. Frequency and distribution of happy and happy+noun and of
glorious and glorious+noun in the FEEN, LNC and ZEN corpora.

CORPUS PERIOD F.             F.       PREMODIFIED F.           PREMODIFIED NOUNS          F.
              happy          glorious NOUNS (R1)               (R1)
                                      for happy                for glorious
FEEN      1620-     0,009% 0,004% conclusion           7,1%    victory                 28,5%
          49                      peace                7,1%    Prince/Queen/Parliament 21,4%
                                      memory           7,1%

LNC       1654      0,006% 0,004% Government           23,3% Instrument                   15,5%
                                      peace            18,3% work                         11,1%
                                                             Gospel                       6,6%
ZEN       1671-     0,01%    0,009% Accession          17,6% memory                       17,1%
          1701                      Restoration        13,2% monarchy                     8,5%

                                      Reign            7,3%    Reign                      8,5%




     Table 2. Frequency and distribution of happy and happy+noun and of
glorious and glorious+noun in the three sub-periods of the BNA.
CORPUS PERIOD F.             F.       NOUNS (R1)      F.      NOUNS (R1)                  F.
              happy          glorious for happy               f or glorious
BNA    1700-        26,9%    10,3%    return          7,7%    memory                      15,4%
PERIOD 1729                           Reign           2,3%    Reign                       3,5%
1                                     Revolution      1,3%    Monarch/King/Queen          2,1%
                                      people          1,2%    victory                     1,8%
                                      Deliverance     0,7%    peace                       1,6%
BNA    1730-        55,8%    23,3%    return          4,9%    Memory                      4,1%
PERIOD 1759                           people          1,2%    victory                     2,0%
2                                     Reign           0,8%    Reign                       1,5%
                                      Deliverance     0,8%    Monarch/King/Queen          1,2%
                                      Revolution      0,5%    Revolution                  1,1%
                                                              peace                       1.1%
                                                              spirit                      0,8%
                                                              [noun] of/for liberty       0,6%
                                                              Deliverance/Deliverer       0,5%
BNA    1760-        123,2% 30,3%      return          1,8%    Revolution                  5,4%
PERIOD 1789                           recovery        1,3%    memory                      2,7%
3                                     people          0,6%    [noun] of/for liberty5      2,1%
                                                              war/struggle                1,8%
                                                              Reign                       1,1%
                                                              victory                     0,8%
                                                              monarch                     0,6%
                                                              Deliverance/Deliverer       0,5%




5
 Most of the occurrences which feature glorious in close proximity to liberty have the following
pattern: glorious + noun + of/for liberty. The noun slot is filled in with words such as cause (78
occurrences), spirit (22 occurrences) and struggle (14 occurrences).
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5. Analysis of happy

In the first half of the 17th century, the FEEN corpus features no dominant
recurrent patterns for happy. The adjective is used with the following meanings,
which are documented in the OED:

happy, adj
I. Senses relating principally to good fortune.
        I.1.a Of a person: favoured by good fortune; lucky, fortunate, successful.
        I.1.b. Blessed, beatified. Now only in of happy memory.
        I.2. Of an event or period: marked by good fortune; fortunate, lucky,
             auspicious; prosperous; favourable, propitious.
II. Senses relating to pleasing appropriateness or aptness.
        II.4.b. Of an action, speech, etc.: pleasantly appropriate to the occasion or
               circumstances; felicitous, apt.
III. Senses relating to contentment.
        III.5.b. Esp. of an event or period: characterized by contentment or
                 pleasure; joyous.
        III.5.c. Used in expressions of good wishes for a person or persons on a
                 celebratory occasion, event, day, etc., as happy birthday, happy
                 Christmas, happy New Year.

In the LNC, on the other hand, we find two recurrent collocations: happy
Government and happy peace. They refer to Cromwell’s government and the
fortunate peace he signed with the Dutch to put an end to the first Anglo-Dutch
War (1652-1654). In both cases the collocations co-occur with Christian terms
(work of God/the Lord, bless, Christ, Lord, religion, Protestant) which stress or imply
the advancement of Protestantism under Cromwell:

      (1) The Ambassador from the King of Denmark has presented his Letters
          credential from the King his Master, and on Friday last he had audience
          before his Highness, where he congratulated him in his place of
          Government , and seemed to acknowledge it a happiness that so much
          of the differences were taken up by the Treaty with the Dutch and
          hoped all would conduce to a happy peace to the advancement of the
          Protestant Religion. (Perfect Account, 10 May 1654)

      (2) And further they humbly beg that Religion and Learning may flourish
          and the work of the Lord may prosper in the hand of the Ministry of
          Christ in these Nations under the hands of his Highness protections,
          Long and Happy Government (Perfect Account, 1 March 1654)

In the ZEN corpus we find three words which co-occur most frequently with
happy: happy Accession, happy Restoration and happy Reign. Happy Accession co-
occurs consistently with the words to the Throne and to the Crown. All the
examples are part of the ritualistic expressions used to celebrate Queen Anne’s
Accession to the throne after the death of her father William III:

      (3) Last Monday the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor, the Aldermen and
          Sheriffs, c. waited upon the Queen at St. James’s to Condole the Death


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            of the late King of Glorious Memory and to Congratulate Her Majesties
            Happy Accession to the Throne (1701ept00221)

The second collocation, Happy Restoration, shows enthusiasm for the return of
the Stuart king Charles II. In this context, happy co-occurs with a semantics of
liberty and deliverance from oppression. Indeed, in 1681 the London Gazette
celebrates the king as gracious dispenser of liberties to his people and Defender
of the Protestant religion:

      (4) As also for the many other Royal Favours we have received under Your
          Majesties just and good Government, ever since Your Majesties happy
          Restauration; and particularly, for Your Majesties vigorous
          Endeavours to extirpate Popery, and secure and maintain the
          Protestant Religion (as by Law established) which with Your
          Gracious Promises of calling frequent Parliaments, and Governing
          according to the Laws in all things, gives us all possible assurance of
          enjoying the greatest Liberty and best Religion that any People in
          the World have. (1681lgz01623)

      (5) May it please Your Majesty, WE Your Majesties most Loyal and Dutiful
          Subjects, being sensible of the great Blessings which this Kingdom hath
          enjoyed ever since Your Majesties happy Restauration, under Your
          Majesties most Gracious and Indulgent Government, and most
          especially, in the constant preservation of the established Religion,
          our Laws and Liberties. (1681lgz01627)

In the propaganda rhetoric which characterizes the extracts above, liberties, laws
and religion were encoded as something granted by the gracious king and ensured
by his happy Restoration. The problem was that these same liberties could be
revoked by the monarch at his pleasure, hence the Parliament’s resolution to call
William of Orange. Even so, the occurrences of happy + semantics of liberty
before 1688 show that a libertarian semantics, with words such as liberties, laws,
rights, Constitution, property, religion, was already used as proxy for the evaluation
of a political event, government or memory of a monarch as happy6.


6
  By semantics of liberty, I refer to that rhetorical conjunction of liberty, law, property,
Constitution, and religion which, although not unique to the 17th century era of Restoration and
Revolution, received a new interpretation from the Glorious Revolution onwards (Nenner 1992:
92). From an Anglocentric perspective, the liberty of the English subjects becomes their property,
inherited from their ancestors and safeguarded by their Law/Constitution. The binomial
property-liberty also affects religion and is invariably invoked in debates on religious toleration.
By 1689 it can be assumed that an affection for Popery leads to the loss of English liberty and
property. Indeed, contemporaries believed that they had a property in their laws and as their
religion was by Law established, its exclusive privileges could not be abridged except by
Parliament. Already in the 17th century, property comes to mean something more than estates
and refers to the unassailable rights and privileges of the English freemen. Locke’s political
philosophy played a crucial role in this regard. For Locke, liberty and property were fundamental
natural rights and the purpose of government was to protect them both. Influenced by Locke, the
Whig political tradition identified property ownership with the preservation of political liberty
and advocated the power of Law as safeguard for individual rights against any form of
absolutism. Locke’s liberalism was in common circulation in the 18th century and spurred the
American Revolution through key political theorists such as Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson
who were influenced by his ideas (Ely 2008).
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     Happy Reign too, which is the third pattern in order of frequency in the ZEN
corpus, is found within the formulaic expressions of good wishes for the return
of Charles II: “that your Majesty may continue a long and happy Reign”, “shall
always pray for your Majesties long Life and happy reign”, and “that your
Majesties happy Reign may be long and prosperous”.
   In BNA 1, 2 and 3 happy return appears as the most frequent collocation. It is
an expression of good wishes addressed to people who are coming back home
and denotes the meaning of happy as contentment for a joyous event. This same
sense of contentment is found in the second most frequent collocation happy
recovery in BNA 3 which is used for sending good wishes to the king. More
interesting for the purpose of the analysis are the other instances of happy +
noun which occur in the three sub-sections of the archive.
    In BNA 1 (1700 to 1729) happy continues to occur as a premodifier of Reign
within the formulaic expression of good wishes “may your Majesty have a long
and happy Reign”. The adjective increasingly co-occurs with a semantics of
liberty, suggesting that a reign is considered happy, fortunate, prosperous insofar
as it is grounded on principles of liberty, property and the preservation of the
Protestant Religion. Although the rhetoric of praise for the future monarchs is
not apparently different from that used for Charles II, the notions of rights and
liberties are no longer to be understood as blessings graciously granted by the
king under his Prerogative but as pre-conditions under which the king can rule
legitimately. The nearby word uninterrupted (ex. 6) is highly significant in this
regard: rights and liberties can no longer be revoked or recalled by the monarch
at his/her pleasure as they are safeguarded by the laws of the kingdom:

      (6) Peace with all Power abroad, perfect Tranquillity and Plenty at Home,
          and the uninterrupted Enjoyment of all our Rights and Liberties
          are such inestimable Blessings to us, as leave us no Room to wish for
          any thing more to complete our Happiness but for Your Majesties Long
          and Happy Reign over a most faithful and obedient Subjects.
          (Caledonian Mercury, 26 November 1724)

      (7) That the Principles upon which we apply to your Majesty for your
          Bounty to the said College in our address of the 1 June 1709, were such
          as we shall never be ashamed to own, they being no other than those
          to which we owe the Preservation of our Religion, Lives and
          Liberties, and Properties and more especially the inestimable
          Blessings of your Majesties Happy Reign over us. (Newcastle Courant,
          20 August 1711)

BNA 1 also features the collocation Happy Revolution (1.3% occurrences). It is
interesting that before being labelled as glorious, the Revolution was described
as Happy, thus suggesting some kind of semantic overlap between the two
adjectives as pre-modifiers of the noun. As was the case with glorious Revolution,
happy Revolution shows a semantic preference for a surrounding libertarian lexis
(e.g. Constitution, Liberty, Property, Law). The reason why happy – rather than
glorious – was initially chosen as pre-modifier of the event of 1688 might be due
to the previous attestations of Happy Restauration which made the adjective the
most plausible candidate for evaluating a new crucial event in the history of
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England positively. It is only after the 1730s that glorious replaces happy as the
preferred collocate for the Revolution in Britain:

      (8) And when we consider the Share that Your Grace had in the Happy
          Revolution in 1688 and the many good Laws You have procur’d Us
          since, particularly That for Preventing the Growth of Popery, We are
          sure that the Liberty and Property, that Happy Constitution in
          Church and State, to which we were restored by King WILLIAM of
          glorious memory will be inviolably preserved under Your Grace’s
          Administration. (Dublin Intelligence, 14 July 1711)

      (9) And will stand by and defend Your Majesties Title founded upon the
          late Happy Revolution and the Church of England as by Law
          established. (Dublin Intelligence, 29 April 1710)

Frequencies in BNA 2 show the consolidation of happy people which sees the
inclusion of the adjective free in the cluster free and happy people for expressing
good wishes to the monarch7. The proximity between the adjectives free and
happy affects the meaning of the latter and enriches it with liberal associations.
The implication is that, after the Revolution, people are evaluated as happy only
insofar as they are free and their rights are acknowledged by their monarch. In
this regard the meaning of the word attested in the OED “of a group or
community: exhibiting harmony or cooperation; marked by a pleasant sense of
harmony and mutual goodwill”, might be extended to include the more political
sense: “of people having their liberties and rights acknowledged by the
government”. As was the case with glorious + semantics of liberty, the use of free
and happy people concentrates in the year of the last Jacobite uprising (1745),
when BNA 2 registers 50% occurrences. The higher frequency of the cluster on
this occasion was dictated by the need to undermine the spreading of Jacobite
feelings with anti-Catholic and anti-Stuart propaganda which celebrated
England’s liberation from absolutism:

      (10) May Your Majesty’s Counsels and Arms prevail to the secure
           Establishment of the Liberties of Europe; may you Triumph over
           your Enemies at home and abroad; and may you long continue to reign
           over a free and happy People. (Kentish Weekly Post, 25 September
           1745)

      (11) Go on victorious Prince, with Heaven’s Applause
             Fight for thy own and for thy Country’s cause
             Leave us our Laws and our Religion free
             And let no Bigot find Approach to thee
           So may thou chase th’ Usurper cross the Main
           And o’er a free and happy people reign
           (Caledonian Mercury, 11 October 1745)




7
 Clusters are defined as “multi-word units, that is, sequences or strings of words which ‘are found
repeatedly together in each other’s company’ in sequence” (Partington 2011: 35).
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Another frequent collocation in BNA 2 is Happy Deliverance which records a slight
increase in comparison to BNA 1. The noun phrase co-occurs with negatively
evaluated terms which represent the origin of discontent and mistrust among the
people, as we can see in the lexico-syntactic pattern happy deliverance from +
negative semantics. Apart from the nearby occurrences of law, liberties, right,
property, the liberal associations that happy acquires can be also inferred from
contrasting semantics: happy Deliverance vs tyranny, Popery, arbitrary power,
oppression, usurpation:

      (12) Great part of the Citizens of London who had not forgot the happy
           Deliverance from Popery and Aribtrary Power by King William III
           of glorious memory. (Stamford Mercury, 28 October 1731)

      (13) The Church of Scotland must ever remember with the greatest joy and
           thankfulness to God our happy deliverance from Tyranny and
           oppression accomplished by the Glorious King William. (The Scots
           Magazine, 1 November 1745)

      (14) The People of this Nation have ever joyfully to commemorate the Day,
           which, by God’s Blessing, brought them a happy Deliverance from a
           tyrannical Usurpation wherein the will of an absolute wicked Man
           was the Law, the Liberties of the subject trampled on and Right
           and Property destroy’d. (Caledonian Mercury, 7 June 1742)

The frequency of happy Revolution slightly decreases from BNA 1 to BNA 2. The
drop is presumably due to the concurrent appearance of the collocation Glorious
Revolution in BNA 2, as we will see in the next section.
   In BNA 3 the co-occurrence of happy + semantics of liberty increases from
24% to 34% occurrences8. The most frequent pre-modified nouns are the same
as those in BNA 2 and follow similar patterns. People is the third most frequent
collocate. The adjective also co-occurs with other premodifiers of people (i.e. free
with 38% occurrences, united with 17% occurrences and loyal with 5%
occurrences) which enhance the meaning of happy as “of people who are in a
state of political well-being and socio-economic prosperity deriving from the
government’s acknowledgement of their Constitutional rights and liberties”. In
particular, BNA 3 features 23% occurrences of the cluster free and happy people
for sending good wishes to the king:

      (15) Whose [your faithful subjects] most ardent wish is that your Majesty
           may be known to the latest Posterity by the most glorious Title of The
           Father of a Free and Happy People. (Oxford Journal, 28 October 1769)

When clustering with the adjectives loyal and united, happy extends the
implications of its meaning further. In the period before and after the American
Revolution, British subjects were considered happy not only insofar as they
enjoyed the privileges of a libertarian monarchy as guaranteed by the Glorious

8
  The percentage is obtained by searching for the words happy + liberty/rights/Constitution and
by counting the co-occurrence of the two words in the concordancing lines which appear in the
first 120 results of BNA.
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Revolution, but also insofar as they lived as loyal and faithful subjects of the
king, united against any insurrectional attempt on the part of radicals and
republicans. While the radicals appropriated the myth of the Glorious Revolution
to legitimize their (allegedly) truly patriotic claims for authentic freedom and
emancipation from domestic corruption, governmental forces insisted on the
assumption that British people had been free since 1688 and had to maintain
their loyalty to their king and Parliament in order to prosper as a model of
happiness for the rest of Europe9. The conceptualization of socio-political
happiness as linked to the loyalty and unity of the British people continues into
1789 as a result of the outbreak of the French Revolution:

      (16) We ardently hope your Majesty’s life will be prolonged in good health;
           that your Majesty may continue to instruct your Subjects by an
           illustrious example of piety and virtue, and may rejoice to see them in
           possession, as they now are, of liberty, peace, a flourishing
           commerce, and encreasing strength; reigning over a truly free,
           loyal and happy people. (Stamford Mercury, 27 March 1789).

In the meantime, the noun phrase happy revolution drops below the threshold of
0,5% and is not reported in table 2. Its usage concentrates in the decade from
1780 to 1789 as a result of the celebration of the anniversary of the Revolution
of 1688:

      (17) To the glorious and immortal memory of king William who, on 4 th
           November 1688, arrived at Torbay and effected that happy revolution
           upon which our liberties and constitution (under our present
           gracious Sovereign) are founded. (Hampshire Chronicle, 24 November
           1788)

Occasionally, happy revolution is used by radical news writers in order to refer to
other effected or desirable revolutions for liberty and emancipation in the rest of
the world:

      (18) If such a Law were passed by our legislature, for the benefit of those
           unhappy creatures who in a free constitution, in the British West Indies,
           are born to slavery, what a happy revolution would be effected, when
           our plantations should be cultivated by the hands of freemen and not
           of slaves. (Kentish Gazette, 24 November 1781)



6. Analysis of glorious

In Table 1, concordances show that the adjective glorious has a semantic
preference for positively evaluated words such as victory, monarchs or Parliament
in the period of the Civil War, Instrument and work (of God) in the Cromwellian
Republic (LNC) and memory (of monarchs) in the period of the Restoration (ZEN


9
  For a discussion on the broad and multifarious meaning of loyalism and patriotism in Britain
see O’Gorman and Blackstock (2014).
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corpus). In most cases, glorious is used with the following meanings documented
in the OED:

glorious, adj.
       3.a. Of persons and things possessing glory, entitled to brilliant and lofty
               renown, illustrious.
       3.b. Of an achievement, action, circumstance, state of things conferring
               glory, entitling to brilliant and lofty renown, conspicuously
               honorable.

The following examples are taken from the Parliamentarian newsbook Mercurius
Britannicus and from the London Gazette in the period after the Restoration:

      (19) *A parliament since the victory in the North. *The States Ambassadors
           have now addressed themselves to the Houses of Parliament, under the
           name and title: who says that a victory in the North is no advantage
           nor lustre to the State? I can not let pass that glorious Victory without
           drawing up the battle one again into their several Brigades. (MB, 8-16
           July 1644)

      (20) And we do, (as indeed we always ought in the greatest Humility)
           lament at Your Majesties Royal Feet, the misfortune of this Island, in
           becoming a Prison to that Royal Martyr, Your Majesties most blessed
           Father of the most Glorious Memory; the thoughts whereof, by the
           Divine Grace, will keep us in our Duty to Your Sacred Person, and
           lawful Successors; and make us watchful, especially over that sort of
           Men, who brought that horrid mischief upon us (1681lgz01627)

In the early Stuart period, the occurrences of glorious fall outside the semantics
of liberty that will characterize the post-Revolution period. This may be due to
the absolutism of Charles I, who exerted his divine right to rule without
restrictions. Nevertheless, instances of the co-occurrence of glorious with a
semantics of liberty are found in the Parliamentarian propaganda during the
Civil War and in the period of the Cromwellian Republic. The example below
features glorious memory occurring in close proximity to the words religion, laws
and liberty, which are represented as undermined by the Prerogative of an
absolute monarch with clear Catholic sympathies. As we can see in the following
example, religion occurs as the first item in the tricolon, thus establishing anti-
Catholicism as the pre-condition for the theory and practice of good governing
(Hempton 1996). In the 18th century the statesman and philosopher Edmund
Burke claimed that the English regarded their church establishment “as the
foundation of their whole constitution with which and with every part of which,
it holds an indissoluble union” (in Hempton 1996, 4). Since the English Civil War,
religion laws and liberty has been construed as a unit of meaning where the
semantic value of religion extends over the socio-political concepts of laws and
liberty in much the same way as laws and liberty act as guarantors of Protestantism10:

10
   Anglo Protestantism was at the root of a violent anti-Catholic sectarianism which deeply affected
Irish history well into the 20th century. More extensive discussion on the origin of sectarianism in
Ireland can be found in several studies such as Hayton (1998), Ford (2005) and Elliott (2009).
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      (21) […] the Parliament yet creates nor makes no Barons, & yet sure those
           whose lusters deserve a glorious memory to all posterity for their
           venturing all for defence of Religion, Laws and Liberty, shall not be
           wanting of due honours? (MB, 22-29 July 1644)

LNC shows two characterizing collocations: glorious instrument and glorious work,
which are both functional to the representation of Oliver Cromwell as God’s
instrument for the safeguarding of the Protestant religion and liberties of the
kingdom:

      (22) In which great work of the Lord, we acknowledge with thankfulness
           Your Highness hath been a glorious Instrument; and hath undergone
           many hardships, and hazard of all that was near and dear unto you,
           even to life itself, and understanding by providence Your Highness
           entrusted with, and hath accepted of the Protection of this Common-
           wealth in the Government thereof. (Everyday Intelligencer, 3 February
           1654)

Cromwell’s actions too are defined as glorious insofar as they are meant to redeem
the liberties of the people through their representatives in Parliament:

      (23) he is every way worthy to Rule, whom God hath been pleased to use
           as his Instrument in that glorious Work of Redeeming the Liberties
           of his people: For, we are bold to say (weighing all circumstances
           together) that this Nation was never really Free, nor in any way of
           enjoying its Freedom so fully as now. (Modern Intelligencer 29 Feb.
           1653, Perfect Occurrences, 27 February 1654, Faithful Scout 3 March
           1654, West Post 7 March 1654)

As stated earlier, further inquiry into the period of the Interregnum (1649-1660)
could provide more data about the usage of happy and glorious in proximity to a
semantics of freedom and emancipation as a result of the transformation of
Britain into a republic. With the advent of the Restoration the adjective seems to
lose this libertarian sense and is mostly used with the meaning of illustrious in
formulaic sentences for commemorating Charles I (see ex. 20) or for anticipating
the best outcome for his son’s reign:

      (24) From which the great God who did miraculously preserve your Sacred
           Person and restored you to us […] still preserve and deliver Your most
           Sacred Majesty and grant Your Majesty a long and glorious Reign.
           (1681lgz01627)

In BNA 1 (from 1700 to 1729), glorious continues to occur as a premodifier of
memory, reign, victory and monarch, although, in some cases, an attitudinal
change emerges which is consistent with the Constitutional values of 1688 and
the celebration of William III as the Providential Deliverer from the Stuarts’
tyranny. More precisely, the adjective begins to co-occur with an emerging
semantics of liberty (17% occurrences) which is actualized in the nearby words
liberty, Constitution, laws, rights, and religion as the following examples show:

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      (25) We are assured that that Liberty and Prosperity, that Happy
           Constitution in Church and State, to which we were restored by King
           William of Glorious Memory, will be inviolably preserved under Your
           Grace’s administration. (Dublin Intelligence, 14 July 1711)

      (26) This House will always preserve to them the full and entire Benefit of
           the Provision made for further securing our Religion, Laws and
           Liberties by an Act passed in the 12th and 13th Year of the Reign of his
           Late Majesty King William III of Glorious Memory. (Newcastle Courant,
           5 March 1726)

Interestingly, the noun phrase Glorious Revolution does not occur before 1711
and only once in my data. The collocation occurs in the title of a pamphlet
advertised in The Flying Post (from the ZEN corpus):

      (27) There is prepar'd for the Press, Solomon against Welton: Or that Princes
           Complaint against the Insolence of the White Chappel Priest. Being a
           Defence of the Resistance, made to the Late King James, by the Church
           of England at the Glorious Revolution in 1688. (1711fpt03022)

In BNA 2 (1730-1759) the co-occurrence of glorious with revolution begins to be
attested in my data (1,1%), followed by the use of glorious as pre-modifier of
Spirit (0,8%) and glorious + noun + of/for Liberty (0,6%). It is worth noting that
the semantic preference of the adjective for words relating to freedom and
constitutional rights occurs about 50 years after the Revolution, in a turbulent
period in which the ideals that animated the political move of 1688 were put in
danger by the corruption of the Whig administration and the threat of the return
of the Stuarts. The closer proximity between glorious and semantics of liberty
(35% occurrences)11 extends the meaning of the adjective with a sense of
freedom and emancipation which is advocated to contrast any kind of tyranny,
whether it comes from the so-called “Pretender” or from Parliament itself:

      (28) This is a Dictate of Nature consistent with Equity, and absolutely
           necessary to preserve the Blessings of Liberty, Property and Peace.
           On this basis was the Glorious Revolution founded, as well as those
           Acts, which for ever exclude the present Gentleman who now pretends
           to mount to the Throne. (Stamford Mercury, 14 Nov 1745)

      (29) The Revolution in 1688 hath been by all the Englishmen by all the
           Lovers of their Country deservedly called a glorious revolution. But
           why? Not because Queen Mary drove her own father from the throne,
           but because Britons did then gloriously exert themselves in defence of
           their religion, rights and liberties. On that account it may truly be
           called glorious. (The Scots Magazine, 4 November 1754)




11
   As was the case with happy, the percentage is obtained by searching for the words glorious +
liberty/laws/rights/Constitution and by counting the co-occurrence of the two words in the first
120 results of BNA. The same procedure is used for calculating the frequency of glorious +
tyranny/tyrannical, glorious + liberty + mankind and glorious + liberty + people/ancestors/Britons.
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      (30) The privileges of thinking, saying and doing what we please, and of
           growing as rich as we can without Restriction […] are the glorious
           Privileges of Liberty; and its Effects, to live in Freedom and Safety,
           are peculiar to Englishmen. (Derby Mercury, 20 September 1745)

      (31) The glorious spirit of Liberty, which hath at length prevailed over
           that Torrent of Bribery and Corruption and Bribery, that has borne
           down all before it these Twenty Years past, gives the greatest
           satisfaction to every independent Briton; and induces us to hope that
           […] we may see our Parliament free and independent and our ancient
           Constitution restored. (Caledonian Mercury, 1 May 1742)

      (32) And your Committee cannot doubt but that this glorious Spirit which
           hath shone out so eminently and conspicuously in this City and Liberty
           will give a light to, and spread and establish itself as a Universal
           Pattern of Freedom and Independency throughout the whole Nation.
           (Newcastle Courant, 20 Jan 1750)

In BNA 2, the idea that something is glorious insofar as it ensures and defends
the liberties of the people is also attested by the co-occurrence of the adjective
with an opposite set of words referring to tyranny (i.e. tyranny, tyrannical,
oppression) and Popery (e.g. Popery, Papist, Popish, Superstition) which peaks in
the 1740s (36% occurrences) due to the fear of the return of the Stuarts, as
examples (33) and (34) show. In the following decades the co-occurrence of
glorious + words semantically related to tyranny/Popery is maintained, although
it decreases in frequency (19% occurrences):

      (33) They think it their Duty to give this publick Warning against the
           present wicked Rebellion in Favours of a Popish Pretender educated in
           the Maxims of Superstition and Tyranny, they therefore obtest all
           Protestants and Lovers of their Country to beware of the Arts of Romish
           Emissaries, who have been endeavouring to undermine the glorious
           Structure of the Revolution, which God reared up by King William of
           immortal memory. (Caledonian Mercury, 26 November 1745)

      (34) That free Protestants should ever think of assisting to restore
           tyrannical Papist government, from which the Glorious King
           William had so providentially delivered us was really amazing. (The
           Scots Magazine, 1 Aug 1746)

As we can see in Table 2, the collocation glorious + Revolution peaks in BNA 3
(1760-1789). Glorious had always had a positive meaning, but throughout the
18th century its usage documents a further semantic specification which is the
result of a new ideological view of what is meant to be glorious. While prior to
1688      the   adjective,    with    some      exceptions,  co-occurred     with
Prince/Reign/Memory entitled to brilliant and lofty renown on account of the iure
divino character of the monarch, throughout the decades glorious is attributed to
King/Queen/Monarch/Reign/Memory insofar as the authorities rule the country
in line with the constitutional laws of the kingdom which are the true expression
of God’s will:

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      (35) A Prince in whom were united all the Virtues which constitute a Brave,
           Wise, Human and Pious Ruler, whose Government over a Free and
           Grateful People was so equitable and just, that during his Long and
           Glorious Reign, the Prerogative of the Crown and the Rights and
           Liberties of the Subject went hand in hand sacred and inviolable.
           (Manchester Mercury, 25 November 1760)

      (36) A Prince [George II], who in the midst of Victories, never deviated from
           the established Rules of Justice and Equity nor suffered, during the
           course of His glorious Reign, our Civil and Religious Liberties ever
           to be interrupted; His Memory therefore will be as dear to his Country,
           as the Greatness He raised it to, will render it glorious to future Ages.
           (Ipswich Journal, 24 Jan 1761)

This ideological change is also documented by the increasing usage of the word
inglorious in my data (from 4 occurrences in the 1720s to 238 occurrences in the
1780s). The close reading of concordances shows that the word acquires
meanings of oppression and conflict in context, as the examples reveal:

      (37) The contest between the King (King John) and the Pope, it is well
           known, turned out to the loss and dishonour of the sovereign who
           finished an oppressive and inglorious reign of more than sixteen
           years in the forty-ninth year of His age. (The Scots Magazine, 7 June
           1762)

      (38) When James I came to the throne, he sat down therein full of himself
           and his iure divino and that Parliaments or people, at that time
           considered as one and the same thing, had no rights but what were
           derived from the grace of the Crown and held under it as such. This led
           to great disputes throughout his weak and inglorious reign. (Leeds
           Intelligencer, 30 June 1770)

Another interesting collocate for glorious is struggle (26 occurrences), mostly
found in the lexico-syntactic pattern glorious struggle for liberty/independence (in
8 cases out of 26). Unlike glorious war, that principally refers to the French and
Indian War (1754-1763) and maintains the meaning of full of glory, honorable
and successful12, the collocation glorious + struggle is often used to describe the
American Revolution in radical news articles as well as in articles originally
published in American newspapers. Both when referring to the military
interventions of the government against Jacobites and when referring to the
American Revolution of the colonists, the noun phrase acquires a sense of liberty
and emancipation, as shown in the following examples:


12
  Consider the following examples of “glorious war”: “Sir, I heartily congratulate you, and my
Country, upon the departure of Monsieur Bussy, and upon the breaking off of those negotiations,
which were very near depriving us of all the fruits of our success, during the course of this
glorious war. If what is reported of his demands be true, the impudence of his Court is
astonishing (Leeds Intelligencer, 6 October 1761); “And lamenting the loss of those many brave
Men, who have fallen in this glorious War, we will pay all due Attention to the Services of those
who yet remain, by whose Valour those Acquisitions have been made. And we will continue to
cultivate that Union to which we greatly owe the success of the War” (Derby Mercury, 26
November 1762).
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      (39) He [the late Marquis of Granby] closed a life of military glory in an
           equal glorious Struggle for the civil Liberties of his Country. (Derby
           Mercury, 2 November 1770)

      (40) The spirit of the time renders it necessary for the Inhabitants of this
           Colony to convene, in order effectually to avert the destructive
           Consequences of the late base inglorious Conduct of our general
           Assembly; who have, in opposition to the loud and general voice of
           their Constituents […] and the glorious struggle we have engaged in
           for our valuable Birthrights, dared to vote supplies to the Troops.
           (Derby Mercury, article reprinted from the New York Gazette, 16
           February 1770)

      (41) Confiding in you, Sir, and in the worthy Generals immediately under
           your Command we have the most flattering Hopes of Success in the
           glorious struggle for American Liberty. (Northampton Mercury, 14
           Aug 1775)

In the last decades of the century, the steady surge in the co-occurrence of
glorious + semantics of liberty (64% occurrences) is accompanied by the
introduction of a semantics of universalism traceable in words universal and
mankind, as the following examples show13:

      (42) Let us therefore at length, return back to those glorious maxims of
           universal liberty established by our great deliverer K. William III, that
           friend to mankind; to whom we owe that this Nation, by adhering
           heretofore to those maxims, had become the most powerful and
           illustrious on earth. (The Scots Magazine, 1 May 1775)

      (43) The glorious epoch is now arrived when France quits her chains,
           emerges from her darkness and is warmed to animation by the bright
           beam of the sun of Liberty. The moment of vast import the prize is
           invaluable, for the noblest rights of mankind and the happiness of
           million must now or never be asserted and secured. (Saunder’s News
           Letter, 12 August 1789)

      (44) In our own days we have witnessed miraculous revolutions for the
           emancipation of mankind from the trammels of tyranny and the
           extension of liberty on the basis of reason. The American colonies after
           a glorious struggle have effected their freedom. (Dublin Evening Post
           17 September 1789)

This expansion in the semantics of glorious is prompted by the radical stance of
the author characterizing several news articles in the last decades of the century.

13
  By semantics of universalism, I refer to those words (typically universal and mankind) which
occur in close proximity to glorious and which reflect the radical stance of the author. A crucial
feature of the Enlightenment was universalism which, amongst the other things, articulated the
category of a shared human nature endowed with natural rights that governments had to secure
through laws made with the assent of the people. Amongst the British radicals of the time who
supported the American and French Revolution, Richard Price, the rational dissenter, claimed
that “the man’s highest destiny would not be realized until mankind enjoyed a universal freedom
in which men might find and do the will of God both to His glory and to the improvement of
humanity” (Toohey 1978: 229).
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In particular, Irish and Scottish editors must have been more directly inclined to
publish articles promoting universal rights and liberties through a re-
appropriation of the Glorious Revolution, given the frustration they shared with
the American colonists as abused subjects of the Empire (Hayton 1988; Pentland
2004). BNA 3 also reveals a further semantic transformation of the adjective as
a result of its increasing co-occurrence with words such as people, Ancestors,
Britons (from 11% occurrences in BNA 1 to 32% occurrences in BNA 3), as we
can see in the following examples:

      (45) In the time of the last Stuart king during the general Confusion, when
           the dastardly Tyrant fled, the principal nobility and gentry restored to
           our Guild-hall for protection, and concerted with our Ancestors, the
           citizens of this metropolis, that generous and equal system of power
           which was established by the people at the Glorious Revolution and
           confirmed by the succeeding Parliament in the Bill of Rights. (Derby
           Mercury, 27 February 1770)

      (46) Your petitioners therefore pray that your Hon. House will be pleased
           to take the Plan of Parliamentary Reform, hereby offered, into its
           consideration, and trust you will comply with the request of a brave
           People, actuated by the glorious idea of liberty, and of restoring the
           Constitution to its original purity. (Dublin Evening Post, 2 March 1784)

      (47) The spirit of freedom now pervades any class and denomination of
           people, the wavering is confirmed and several of those who have
           proved opponents to the glorious cause from a variety of
           circumstances have now become advocates for defending the rights of
           their country. (Saunder’s Newsletter, 16 August 1785)

From the 1760s onwards, British newspapers encode the key role of the people
in the accomplishment of the Glorious Revolution in order to construct a
revolutionary tradition of people who fight for the defence of their natural rights.
This a posteriori construction of a legacy of popular sovereignty in the
Revolution of 1688 is exploited by radical Whigs in order to legitimize popular
resistance to a tyrannical Parliament and justify extra-parliamentary actions in
the present. In particular, liberty is now seen as part of those natural rights which
have been granted by God to His people and which exist independent of the
favour of their monarchs and MPs. From the 1760s onwards, under the drift of
radical whiggism and Tory patriotism, glorious extends its meaning in the British
press by combining the sense of liberty, which the word acquired immediately
after the Revolution, with that of popular will and resistance against any form
of religious and political oppression.


7. Conclusion

A corpus-assisted discourse analysis of the usage of happy and glorious in the
period before and after the Revolution of 1688 shows that the two pre-modifying
adjectives undergo a semantic transformation throughout the 17 th and 18th

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centuries. In particular, the analysis of weekly pamphlets and newspapers
document an extension in their usage after the Revolution, when the two words
begin to pre-modify nouns which did not appear as frequent collocates before
(revolution, struggle, deliverance, spirit, liberty). At the same time, the analysis of
the collocational patterns of the two adjectives suggests a narrowing of their
meaning in political discourse. Indeed, after the Revolution, a reign, a monarch,
his/her memory and the people are considered happy and glorious only insofar
as the authorities abide by libertarian principles and people can benefit from the
freedom ensured by the laws of the kingdom.
    By and large, it may be claimed that the Glorious Revolution marked a
watershed between two different ideological conceptualizations of what was
glorious and what made a reign and its people happy. In the Stuart period, before
the Glorious Revolution, a reign, a monarch and all their achievements were
considered glorious insofar as glory was immanent in the king’s persona and part
of his iure divino character. The king was referred to as the gracious dispenser of
liberties which were nevertheless subject to his Prerogative and as such could be
revoked. People celebrated the monarch in the hope that he would keep his
promises and follow the laws of the kingdom rather than his personal will. After
the Revolution of 1688 a monarch and his/her reign and memory were evaluated
as happy and glorious insofar as glory was conferred on them by people’s socio-
political wellbeing. From a strictly Anglocentric perspective, people’s happiness
derived from the government’s acknowledgements of their natural rights to
freedom; as a result, monarchs were glorified only if they recognized and
protected the people’s rights to liberty, property and Protestant religion. Given
that happy and glorious already had a positive meaning, the libertarian
association that they acquired after 1688 may be interpreted as a further
semantic amelioration in the direction of liberalism and – towards the end of the
18th century – Enlightened universalism, which set the basis for an embryonic
vision of democracy.


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Corpora and archives

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Florence Early English Newspapers Corpus (FEEN). Compiled by Nicholas
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