The Glorious Revolution of 1688 & the end of Maundy Thursday Royal feet washing
While not much is made of it there was a revolution in 1688 in England.
William and Mary came to the throne. In the seventeenth century religion was far more central to national life than it now is for many. William, Prince William of Orange, was a Dutch Calvinist.
On Maundy Thursday 7th April 1689 people had made their way to Hampton Court hoping to be touched by the King and have their feet washed as had been the tradition. It was of course interrupted during the Commonwealth from 1649-1660 as there was no King available to do it.
William however declined to do this. As often the history is complicated.
The decision to stop feet washing was in part political. William fairly obviously had not arrived on the throne via some kind of Divine Right of Kings but because he had been appointed by Parliament through a process of political revolution. Hence the idea that the monarch could somehow cure people by touching them didn’t fit. In this sense the change was progressive.
However William also disliked the idea of feet washing because it was regarded as ‘superstitious’ which was a code for Roman Catholic, underlining the discrimination against those who hold that faith which has been an abiding feature of official British life since the sixteenth century.
The tradition of course was not so easy to get rid of as all that and the debate about whether Royal feet washing on Maundy Thursday was appropriate continued well into the eighteenth century.
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