County studies have succeeded in proving that there was no self-sufficient impetus to rebellion (let alone revolution) within the English counties. T… - J. C. D. Clark

Like most things under threat today, our experience of it began with the Reformation. Medieval England was part of European Christendom: it never developed a unitary concept of sovereignty while the papacy effectively claimed jurisdiction over things that were God's. The break with Rome made the difference, and Henry VIII's Act in Restraint of Appeals contained the key phrase "the Realm of England is an empire"—that is, a jurisdiction from which there was no appeal... English lawyers responded to these events by devising a new attitude to the integrity of the state. Sovereignty was not a concept that had emerged in the Roman law tradition of the continent which continued for centuries to include a host of local and corporate privileges, immunities and independent jurisdictions. The English common law swept all these away and created a single, level playing field.

PCism...is about manipulating public doctrine for private ends. The form it takes depends on the nature of national values. In America, PCism derives from three unchallengeable ideals. The ideal of equality is used to promote the interests of women and racial minorities, often ending in very inegalitarian provisions such as quotas. Collective moral improvement is used selectively to deny people what will supposedly harm them, formerly alcohol, soon tobacco. The sanctity of the individual is interpreted to demand parity of esteem for unconventional lifestyles, especially homosexuality, and can be exploited in all sorts of ways through the new sexual harassment industry. In Britain, the pattern is different. None of these things have gained nearly as much ground as in the United States, but the same technique of making a sectional self-interest unchallengeable and using totalitarian methods to inhibit criticism is used in favour of regional cultures against metropolitan culture; used in our endlessly various class war by plebeians against patricians, and, especially, used in that strange crusade of denigration of our national institutions.

The rebellion of 1688 was not a bid for a weak monarchy, but for a Protestant monarchy. Consequently, the legislative expressions of that attempt which followed had much to do with religion, but little to do with placing limitations on the monarchy's prerogative in other spheres. Discounting the libertarian rhetoric which 1688–9 generated on the part of a small but vocal minority, it is possible to see that the effective powers of the Crown continued to grow.