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Bill of Rights 1689

1689

An act of the English Parliament from 1689 limiting royal power, often taught alongside Magna Carta as part of England's constitutional tradition.

Often taught as the successor to Magna Carta, this 1689 act continued the project of limiting the crown by law.

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Image of a long, narrow, aged parchment document with handwritten lines of dense old-style script, a faded heading at the top, and a light brown tinted background with a white border.
Bill of Rights, 1689.

About this source

What it is

The Bill of Rights 1689 is an act of the Parliament of England that set out civil rights and changed the royal succession following the Glorious Revolution. It received royal assent in December 1689 and restated an earlier Declaration of Right presented to William III and Mary II.

Why it matters

The Bill limited the monarch's powers, established parliamentary rights, and listed individual protections such as freedom from cruel punishment and from taxation without Parliament's consent. It is considered one of the basic documents of the British constitution alongside Magna Carta and the Petition of Right, showing a long chain of documents used to check royal authority over centuries.

Look closer

  • What specific abuses of King James II does the document list, and why might that matter to the people who wrote it?
  • How does this document build on ideas from Magna Carta nearly 500 years earlier?
  • Who gets to claim these rights, and who might have been excluded?

This document is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Magna Carta on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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