With James II having fled to France amid the Glorious Revolution, English peers and commoners assembled in an extraordinary Convention Parliament, lacking royal summons, to decide who would rule. Their deliberations produced the Declaration of Right and set England on a path toward constitutional monarchy.
There was no king to summon Parliament, which was itself a constitutional puzzle: how could a legitimate Parliament convene without royal authority? The solution, worked out amid tense debate, was to call it a 'Convention' rather than a proper Parliament, sidestepping the legal fiction while achieving the same effect.
Members argued fiercely over whether James had 'abdicated' or been rightfully deposed, a distinction with enormous implications for the principle of hereditary succession. The compromise language they eventually settled on—that James had violated the fundamental laws and 'abdicated the government'—allowed monarchists and reformers alike to save face.
The Convention's work culminated weeks later in the Bill of Rights, which curtailed royal power and enshrined parliamentary supremacy for centuries to come. It was a peculiarly English revolution: bloodless, legalistic, and obsessed with precedent even while making radical change.