Wednesday, November 5, 2025

It is the 5th of November 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

“Remember, Remember the 5th of November”- well, that was on last year's show for this day- the 5th of November that British folks want us to remember was the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. This was the foiled plan by Catholics to blow up Parliament and to kill the king, the Protestant James I (of King James Bible fame). This is the story with Guy Fawkes and all that…  

But what if I told you that the Protestant/Catholic tensions that were stoked by that event on the 5th of November in 1605 would only come to something like a conclusion on another 5th of November- this time in 1688- also with a King James- but James II after a series of Civil Wars, the beheading of King Charles I, Cromwell and all that.

It was on this, the 5th of November in 1688, that William of Orange, the Dutch Stadholder and both nephew and son-in-law of King James II, landed with his Dutch fleet in England at Torbay. He was the son of Mary, the daughter of Charles I of England, and then married another Mary, the daughter of King James II. It’s confusing. Suffice it to say, he had something of a claim to the English throne, and this is what would set off the so-called “Glorious Revolution” of 1688.

Oh, sure- someone will say “well, actually, it was neither glorious nor a revolution”… argh, begone, nerd! But I get it… But here’s the deal- to understand how the Reformation came to an end, in many ways, in England, is to understand this revolution. And, if you’re interested in American history, the Glorious Revolution is indispensable if you want to understand the American Revolution less than a century later.

So- King James II- he’s of the house of Stuart- is on the throne. The first, Protestant King James, had been succeeded by his son, Charles I, who was beheaded, and this is part of the story of the civil wars and the commonwealth and Cromwell and all that.

The English decide that the Puritans are, in fact, no fun as rulers, and the restoration of the crown takes place in 1660 with the crowning of Charles I's son, Charles II. He plays nice with the Protestant majority- brings back the theatre and all that… good times. He is succeeded by his brother, James II, in 1685, and is less circumspect about his own catholicism (now a minority in England) and his own desires to be an absolute monarch (this is a theme in those Stuart kings going back to James I). When he becomes king in 1685, the French King, Louis XIV, who he admires, revokes the protection of Protestants in France, leading many to flee to England and to stoke the fear that the same might happen under the Catholic English king.

James II maneuvered to get his men in place, to secure a strong standing army to quell unrest and the like- but it wasn’t until his wife gave birth in 1688 that some of the louder alarm bells began to ring. That child, presumably raised as a Catholic, would be next in line instead of Mary, James’ daughter, who had married the Protestant William of Orange in the Netherlands.

This leads to a curious bit of bipartisanship amongst the English who decide to call on William to come to England with his wife, with a fleet, to claim the English crown. William, who is busy with Continental wars, sees an alliance of England and France as a problem and agrees. When he arrives, he is outnumbered- but some of James’ top men have defected and he sees the writing on he wall. William turns a blind eye to James fleeing to France, and he and his wife, William and Mary, are the new monarchs of England.

Why is this a big deal? First, they would put in place the Act of Succession, which stated that the English monarchs must be Protestant. This is how the house of Hannover and all those King Georges get involved. It also represents a final chapter in the English Reformation and the end of the Protestant Catholic tussling that marked the past century and more.

It also established a bill of rights and a limited monarchy within a kind of bicameral legislature… students of American history know- we didn’t invent our own system- but borrowed heavily from our English predecessors- but that’s a story for another time.

Something about the 5th of November- from Guy Fawkes in 1605 to William of Orange landing at Torbay in 1688 that makes this a red letter day in 17th-century English and Reformation history.

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and Habakuk 3- a word on trust amidst trouble:

Though the fig tree do not blossom,
    nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail

    and the fields yield no food,

the flock be cut off from the fold

    and there be no herd in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the Lord,

    I will joy in the God of my salvation.

God, the Lord, is my strength;

    he makes my feet like hinds’ feet,

    he makes me tread upon my high places.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 5th of November 2025, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who knows that today is bonfire night in England and is always looking for a good effigy to burn; he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who is proud to tell you that the Orange monarch butterfly may well be named after William of Orange- the monarch when British colonists discovered the species… Dan van Voorhis. 

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.