https://earlymoderneurope.hist.sites.carleton.edu/files/original/59ff7fb0ec04d0fb70d24c4180b93c25.jpg 66ca91ab6a8b5f7d700b6ee7fb33d272 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource English Bill of Rights, 1689 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Parliament of the United Kingdom Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Matthew Walsh Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1689 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Wikimedia Commons, original image available <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:English_Bill_of_Rights_of_1689.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">here</a>. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Public Domain, full license information available at image page above. Description An account of the resource In order to prevent the Catholic heir of King James II from the inheriting the throne and reuniting the Anglican Church with Rome, Parliament decided to offer the throne to Dutch noble William of Orange and his wife Mary. In exchange, they drew up a list of rights that had to be afforded to subjects of the Crown. Among these rights was the right to bear arms, extended only to Protestants. The anti-Catholic nature of this document is made explicit in the final paragraph, when “papists” and all who marry a Catholic in communion with the pope are forbidden from the English throne, out of supposed concern for the safety and the security of the realm (Wiesner-Hanks, 342-343). This document illuminates several aspects of the papacy in the early modern period. First, it illustrates that the institution of the papacy came to be a central identifying feature of Catholicism. Thus the Bill of Rights uses “papist” and “Catholic” interchangeable. Yet its use as an epithet also demonstrates that the papacy continued to be a cause of criticism from Protestants and Protestant countries. While the papacy unified Catholicism, it exacerbated conflict between itself and other Christian groups. Protestant nations like England imagined an international specter, the Bishop of Rome, which loomed over them and sought to overthrow the Protestant authorities and establish Catholic tyranny within their borders. The papacy is therefore inextricably linked with many of the political conflicts and controversies of the late seventeenth century.