The Toleration Act of 1689 did not
go as far as the Dissenters might have desired, but it gave them the
legal right to worship in public, while their enemies, the Roman
Catholics, remained under the ban.
[Sidenote: Commercial Gains for England]
[Sidenote: Union of England and Scotland: the Kingdom of Great Britain,
1707]
In the foreign policy of the reigns of William (1689-1702) and Mary,
and of Anne (1702-1714), Whiggish policies generally predominated. The
merchants and shippers who formed an important wing of the Whig party
were highly gratified by the Wars of the League of Augsburg and the
Spanish Succession, [Footnote: See above, pp. 248 ff., and below, pp.
306 ff.] in which England fought at once against France, her commercial
and colonial rival, and against Louis XIV, the friend of the Catholic
Stuart pretenders to the English throne. [Footnote: Louis XIV openly
supported the pretensions of James (III), the "Old Pretender."] The
Methuen Treaty (1703) was also advantageous: it allowed English
merchants to sell their manufactures in Portugal without hindrance; in
return for this concession England lowered the duties on Portuguese
wines, and "Port" supplanted "Burgundy" on the tables of English
gentlemen.
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