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Let me highlight the important point for clarification:
Whoever gets into the exercise of any part of the power, by other ways than what the laws of the community have prescribed, hath no right to be obeyed, though the form of the commonwealth be still preserved; since he is not the person the laws have appointed, and consequently not the person the people have consented to.
Weren't the soldiers who abandoned James II, acting contrary to his word as law, violating what Locke is saying? And if so, shouldn't James II be the one who was the rightful monarch?
William proclaimed, “The Liberties of England and the Protestant Religion I will maintain.” I suspect that Locke saw William as the more likely ruler to uphold what he himself believed rather than James II. Locke cherished moral reasoning as his method of human rationale. If he viewed William as more moral, he would have gone against his prior statements to follow the leader he felt represented the people's consent better. Locke was still a nobleman and I suspect noblesse oblige still tainted some of his thinking. I'll have to research this some more myself.
