He is willing, indeed, to look for the causes of the Revolution as far back as the reign of James I; though he shows his lack of true perception when he ascribes the true inwardness of the Reformation to the greed of the monarch for the spoils of the clergy.

At bottom what mainly impresses him is the immense influence of personal accident upon events.
Intrigue, a sudden dislike, some backstairs piece of gossip, here is the real root of great changes.

And when he expresses a "thorough contempt" for the kind of work scholars such as Scaliger and Petavius had achieved, he shows his entire ignorance of the method whereby alone a knowledge of general principle can be attained.
A clear vision, of course, he has, and he was not beguiled by high notions of prerogative or the like.

The divine right of kings is too stupid to be worth the trouble of refutation; all that makes a king important is the authority he exerts.

So, too, with the Church; for Bolingbroke, as a professed deist, has no trouble with such matters as the apostolic succession.