16 September 1701 A.D. King James II Dies
16
September 1701 A.D. King James
II Dies.
James II & VII
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Reign
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6 February 1685 –
11 December 1688 |
23 April 1685
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Predecessor
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Successors
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Spouse
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Issue
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Father
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Mother
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Born
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Died
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Burial
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Church of the English
Benedictines, Paris
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Signature
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Religion
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James II and VII (14
October 1633O.S. – 16 September 1701)[1] was King of England and
Ireland as James
II and King of Scotland as James VII,[2] from 6 February 1685 until he was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. He was the last Roman Catholic monarch to reign over the Kingdoms
of England, Scotland and
Ireland.
The second son of Charles I, he ascended the throne upon the death of his brother, Charles II. Members of Britain's political and religious elite increasingly suspected him of being pro-French and pro-Catholic and of having designs on becoming an absolute monarch. When he produced a Catholic heir, the tension exploded, and leading nobles called on his Protestant son-in-law and nephew, William III of Orange, to land an invasion army from the Netherlands, which he did. James fled England (and thus was held to have abdicated) in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.[3] He was replaced by his Protestant elder daughter, Mary II, and her husband, William III. James made one serious attempt to recover his crowns from William and Mary, when he landed in Ireland in 1689 but, after the defeat of the Jacobite forces by the Williamite forces at the Battle of the Boyne in July 1690, James returned to France. He lived out the rest of his life as a pretender at a court sponsored by his cousin and ally, King Louis XIV.
James is best known for struggles with the English Parliament and his attempts to create religious liberty for English Roman Catholics and Protestant nonconformists against the
wishes of the Anglican establishment. However, he also continued the
persecution of the Presbyterian Covenanters in Scotland. Parliament, opposed to
the growth of absolutism that was occurring in other European countries, as
well as to the loss of legal supremacy for the Church
of England, saw their opposition as a way to preserve what they
regarded as traditional English liberties. This tension made James's four-year
reign a struggle for supremacy between the English Parliament and the Crown,
resulting in his deposition, the passage of the Bill of Rights,
and the Hanoverian succession.
Contents
Early life
Birth
James, the second surviving son of Charles I and
Henrietta Maria of France, was born at St. James's Palace in London on 14 October 1633.[4] Later that same year, James was baptised by William
Laud, the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury.[5] James was educated by tutors, along with his brother, the future King Charles II,
and the two sons of the Duke of Buckingham, George and Francis Villiers.[6] At the age of three, James was appointed Lord
High Admiral; the position was initially honorary, but would become a
substantive office after the Restoration, when James was an adult.[7]
Civil War
James was invested with the Order of the Garter in 1642,[8] and created Duke of York on
22 January 1644.[5] As the King's disputes with the English Parliament grew into the English
Civil War, James stayed in Oxford, a Royalist stronghold.[9] When the city surrendered after the siege
of Oxford in 1646, Parliamentary leaders ordered the Duke of York
to be confined in St. James's Palace.[10] In 1648, he escaped from the Palace, aided by Joseph
Bampfield, and from there he went to The
Hague in disguise.[11] When Charles I was executed by the rebels in 1649, monarchists proclaimed
James's older brother as Charles II of England.[12] Charles II was recognised by the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of Ireland, and was crowned King
of Scotland at Scone in
Scotland in 1651. Although he was proclaimed King in Jersey, Charles was unable to secure the crown
of England and consequently fled to France and
exile.[12]
Exile in France
Turenne, James's commander
in France
Like his brother, James sought refuge in France, serving
in the French army under Turenne against the Fronde, and later against their
Spanish allies.[13] In the French army James had his first true experience of battle where,
according to one observer, he "ventures himself and chargeth gallantly
where anything is to be done".[13] In 1656, when his brother Charles entered into an alliance with Spain—an
enemy of France—James was expelled from France and forced to leave Turenne's
army.[14] James quarrelled with his brother over the diplomatic choice of Spain over
France. Exiled and poor, there was little that either Charles or James could do
about the wider political situation, and James ultimately travelled to Bruges and (along with his younger brother, Henry)
joined the Spanish army under Louis, Prince of Condé, fighting against his former French comrades at the Battle of the Dunes.[15] During his service in the Spanish army, James became friendly with two
Irish Catholic brothers in the Royalist entourage, Peter and
Richard Talbot, and became somewhat estranged from his brother's Anglican advisers.[16] In 1659, the French and Spanish made peace.
James, doubtful of his brother's chances of regaining the throne, considered
taking a Spanish offer to be an admiral in their navy.[17] Ultimately, he declined the position; by the next year the situation in
England had changed, and Charles II was proclaimed King.[18]
Restoration
First marriage
After Richard
Cromwell's resignation as Lord
Protector in 1659 and the subsequent collapse of the Commonwealth in
1660, Charles II was restored to the English throne. Although James was the heir
presumptive, it seemed unlikely that he would inherit the Crown, as
Charles was still a young man capable of fathering children.[19] On 31 December 1660, following his brother's restoration, James was
created Duke of Albany in
Scotland, to go along with his English title, Duke of York.[20] Upon his return to England, James prompted an immediate controversy by
announcing his engagement to Anne
Hyde, the daughter of Charles' chief minister, Edward Hyde.[21] In 1659, while trying to seduce her, James promised he would marry Anne.[22] Anne became pregnant in 1660, but following the Restoration and
James's return to power, no one at the royal court expected a prince to marry a
commoner, no matter what he had pledged beforehand.[23] Although nearly everyone, including Anne's father, urged the two not to
marry, the couple married secretly, then went through an official marriage
ceremony on 3 September 1660 in London. Their first child, Charles, was born
less than two months later, but died in infancy, as did five further sons and
daughters.[23] Only two daughters survived: Mary
(born 30 April 1662) and Anne
(born 6 February 1665).[24] Samuel Pepys
wrote that James was fond of his children and his role as a father, and played
with them "like an ordinary private father of a child", a contrast to
the distant parenting common to royals at the time.[25] James's wife was devoted to him and influenced many of his decisions.[26] Even so, he kept a variety of mistresses, including Arabella Churchill and Catherine
Sedley, and was reputed to be "the most unguarded ogler of
his time."[27] With Catherine Sedley, James II had a daughter, Catherine
Darnley (so named because James II was a descendant of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley). Anne Hyde died in 1671.
Military and political offices
After the Restoration, James was confirmed as Lord
High Admiral, an office that carried with it the subsidiary
appointments of Governor of Portsmouth and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.[28] James commanded the Royal
Navy during the Second
(1665–1667) and Third Anglo-Dutch Wars (1672–1674). Following the raid on the Medway in 1667, James oversaw the survey and re-fortification of the southern
coast.[29] The office of Lord High Admiral, combined with his revenue from post office and
wine tariffs (granted him by Charles upon his restoration) gave James enough
money to keep a sizeable court household.[30]
In 1664, Charles granted American territory between the
Delaware and Connecticut Rivers to James. Following its capture by the English
the former Dutch territory of New
Netherland and its principal port, New
Amsterdam, were named the Province and
City of New York in James's honour. After the founding, the duke gave part of
the colony to proprietors George
Carteret and John
Berkeley. Fort
Orange, 240 kilometres (150 mi) north on the Hudson
River, was renamed Albany after James's Scottish title.[23] In 1683, he became the governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, but did not take an active role in its governance.[23] James also headed the Royal African Company, a slave trading company.[31]
In September 1666, his brother Charles put him in charge
of firefighting operations in the Great Fire of London, in the absence of action by Lord Mayor Thomas
Bloodworth. This was not a political office, but his actions and
leadership were noteworthy. "The Duke of York hath won the hearts of the
people with his continual and indefatigable pains day and night in helping to
quench the Fire", wrote a witness in a letter on 8 September.[32]
Conversion to Roman Catholicism and
second marriage
Mary of Modena, James's second wife
James's time in France had exposed him to the beliefs and
ceremonies of Catholicism; he and his wife, Anne, became drawn to that faith.[33] James took Eucharist in the Roman Catholic
Church in 1668 or 1669, although his conversion was kept secret for some time
and he continued to attend Anglican services until 1676.[34] In spite of his conversion, James continued to associate primarily with
Anglicans, including John Churchill and George Legge, as well as French Protestants,
such as Louis de Duras, the Earl of Feversham.[35]
Growing fears of Catholic influence at court led the
English Parliament to introduce a new Test
Act in 1673.[36] Under this Act, all civil and military officials were required to take an
oath (in which they were required to disavow the doctrine of transubstantiation and denounce certain practices of the Catholic Church as superstitious and
idolatrous) and to receive the Eucharist under the auspices of the Church
of England.[37] James refused to perform either action, instead choosing to relinquish the
post of Lord High Admiral. His conversion to Catholicism was thereby made
public.[36]
Charles II opposed the conversion, ordering that James's
daughters, Mary and Anne, be raised as Protestants.[38] Nevertheless, he allowed James to marry the Catholic Mary
of Modena, a fifteen-year-old Italian princess.[39] James and Mary were married
by proxy in a Catholic ceremony on 20 September 1673.[40] On 21 November, Mary arrived in England and Nathaniel Crew, Bishop
of Oxford, performed a brief Anglican service that did little more
than recognise the Catholic marriage.[41] Many British people, distrustful of Catholicism, regarded the new Duchess
of York as an agent of the Pope.[42]
Exclusion Crisis
In 1677, James reluctantly consented to his daughter
Mary's marriage to the Protestant William of Orange (who was also James's nephew, the son of his sister Mary,
Princess Royal), acquiescing after his brother Charles
and William had agreed upon the marriage.[43] Despite the Protestant marriage, fears of a potential Catholic monarch
persisted, intensified by the failure of Charles II and his wife, Catherine of Braganza, to produce any children. A defrocked Anglican clergyman, Titus
Oates, spoke of a "Popish
Plot" to kill Charles and to put the Duke of York on the
throne.[44] The fabricated plot caused a wave of anti-Catholic hysteria to sweep
across the nation.
In England, the Earl
of Shaftesbury, a former government minister and now a
leading opponent of Catholicism, attempted to have James excluded from the line
of succession.[45] Some members of Parliament even proposed that the crown go to Charles's
illegitimate son, James Scott, 1st Duke of
Monmouth.[46] In 1679, with the Exclusion
Bill in danger of passing, Charles II dissolved Parliament.[47] Two further Parliaments
were elected in 1680 and 1681, but were dissolved for the same reason.[48] The Exclusion Crisis contributed to the development of the English
two-party system: the Whigs
were those who supported the Bill, while the Tories were those who opposed it. Ultimately, the succession was not altered, but
James was convinced to withdraw from all policy-making bodies and to accept a
lesser role in his brother's government.[49]
On the orders of the King, James left England for Brussels.[50] In 1680, he was appointed Lord High Commissioner of Scotland and took up
residence at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh to suppress an uprising and oversee royal government.[51] James returned to England for a time when Charles was stricken ill and
appeared to be near death.[52] The hysteria of the accusations eventually faded, but James's relations
with many in the English Parliament, including the Earl of Danby, a former ally, were forever strained and a solid segment turned against
him.[53]
Return to favour
In 1683, a plot was uncovered to assassinate Charles and
James and spark a republican
revolution to re-establish a government of the Cromwellian style.[54] The conspiracy, known as the Rye
House Plot, backfired upon its conspirators and provoked a wave of
sympathy for the King and James.[55] Several notable Whigs, including
the Earl of Essex and
the King's illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, were implicated.[54] Monmouth initially confessed to complicity in the plot, implicating
fellow-plotters, but later recanted.[54] Essex committed suicide and Monmouth, along with several others, was
obliged to flee into Continental exile.[56] Charles reacted to the plot by increasing repression of Whigs and
dissenters.[54] Taking advantage of James's rebounding popularity, Charles invited him
back onto the privy
council in 1684.[57] While some in the English Parliament remained wary of the possibility of a
Catholic king, the threat of excluding James from the throne had passed.
Reign
Accession to the throne
Coronation procession of
King James II and Queen Mary of Modena, 1685
Charles died in 1685 after converting to Catholicism on
his deathbed.[58] Having no legitimate children, Charles was succeeded by his brother James,
who reigned in England and Ireland as James II, and in Scotland as James VII.
There was little initial opposition to his succession, and there were
widespread reports of public rejoicing at the orderly succession.[59] James wanted to proceed quickly to the coronation, and was crowned with
his wife at Westminster Abbey on 23 April 1685.[60] The new Parliament
that assembled in May 1685, which gained the name of "Loyal
Parliament", was initially favourable to James, and the new
King sent word that even most of the former exclusionists would be forgiven if
they acquiesced to his rule.[59] Most of Charles's officers continued in office, the exceptions being the
promotion of James's brothers-in-law, the Earls of Clarendon and Rochester, and the demotion of Halifax.[61] Parliament granted James a generous life income, including all of the
proceeds of tonnage and poundage and the customs duties.[62] James worked harder as king than his brother had, but was less willing to
compromise when his advisers disagreed.[63]
Two rebellions
Soon after becoming king, James faced a rebellion in
southern England led by his nephew, the Duke of Monmouth, and another rebellion in Scotland led by Archibald Campbell, the Earl of Argyll.[64] Argyll and Monmouth both began their expeditions from Holland, where James's nephew and son-in-law, William of Orange, had neglected to detain them or put a stop to their recruitment efforts.[65] Argyll sailed to Scotland and, on arriving there, raised recruits mainly
from amongst his own clan, the Campbells.[66] The rebellion was quickly crushed, and Argyll himself was captured at Inchinnan on 18 June 1685.[66] Having arrived with fewer than 300 men and unable to convince many more to
flock to his standard, Argyll never posed a credible threat to James.[67] Argyll was taken as a prisoner to Edinburgh. A new trial was not commenced
because Argyll had previously been tried and sentenced to death. The King
confirmed the earlier death sentence and ordered that it be carried out within
three days of receiving the confirmation.
Monmouth's rebellion was coordinated with Argyll's, but
the former was more dangerous to James. Monmouth had proclaimed himself King at
Lyme
Regis on 11 June.[68] He attempted to raise recruits but was unable to gather enough rebels to
defeat even James's small standing army.[69] Monmouth's rebellion attacked the King's forces at night, in an attempt at
surprise, but was defeated at the Battle of Sedgemoor.[69] The King's forces, led by Feversham and Churchill, quickly dispersed the
ill-prepared rebels.[69] Monmouth himself was captured and executed at the Tower
of London on 15 July.[70] The King's judges—most notably, George Jeffreys—condemned many of the rebels to transportation and
indentured servitude in the West Indies in
a series of trials that came to be known as the Bloody
Assizes.[71] Some 250 of the rebels were executed.[70] Jeffreys browbeat witnesses and juries, cursing his victims, gloating over
them and giving guilt the benefit of every doubt except where a substantial
bribe had been paid.[72] James made some effort to check the brutality, but later raised Jeffreys
to the peerage and made him Lord Chancellor (6 September 1686).[73] While both rebellions were defeated easily enough, they hardened James's
resolve against his enemies and increased his suspicion of the Dutch.[74]
Religious liberty and the dispensing
power
To protect himself from further rebellions, James sought
safety in an enlarged standing
army.[75] This alarmed his subjects, not only because of the trouble soldiers caused
in the towns, but because it was against the English tradition to keep a
professional army in peacetime.[76] Even more alarming to Parliament was James's use of his dispensing
power to allow Roman Catholics to command several regiments
without having to take the oath mandated by the Test Act.[75] When even the previously supportive Parliament objected to these measures,
James ordered Parliament prorogued in
November 1685, never to meet again in his reign.[77] In the beginning of 1686 two papers were found in Charles II's strong box
and his closet, in his own hand, stating the arguments for Catholicism over
Protestantism. James published these papers with a declaration signed by his sign
manual and challenged the Archbishop of Canterbury and the
whole Anglican episcopal bench to refute Charles's arguments: "Let me have
a solid answer, and in a gentlemanlike style; and it may have the effect which
you so much desire of bringing me over to your church". The Archbishop
refused on the grounds of respect for the late king.[78]
Rochester, once amongst James's supporters, turned against him by
1688, as did most Anglicans
James advocated repeal of the penal laws in all three of his
kingdoms, but in the early years of his reign he refused to allow those
dissenters who did not petition for relief to receive it.[79] James sent a letter to the Scottish Parliament at its opening in 1685,
declaring his wish for new penal laws against refractory Presbyterians and
lamented that he was not there in person to promote such a law. In response,
the Parliament passed an Act that stated, "whoever should preach in a
conventicle under a roof, or should attend, either as preacher or as a hearer,
a conventicle in the open air, should be punished with death and confiscation
of property".[80] In March 1686, James sent a letter to the Scottish Privy Council
advocating toleration for Catholics but that the persecution of the
Presbyterian Covenanters should continue, calling them to London when they
refused to acquiesce his wishes.[81] The Privy Councillors explained that they would grant relief to Catholics
only if a similar relief was provided for the Covenanters and if James promised
not to attempt anything that would harm the Protestant religion. James agreed
to a degree of relief to Presbyterians, but not to the full toleration he
wanted for Catholics, declaring that the Protestant religion was false and he
would not promise not to prejudice a false religion.[81]
James allowed Catholics to occupy the highest offices of
the Kingdoms, and received at his court the papal
nuncio, Ferdinando d'Adda, the first representative from Rome to London since the reign of Mary
I.[82] James's Jesuit
confessor, Edward Petre, was a particular object of Protestant ire.[83] When the King's Secretary of State, the Earl of Sunderland, began replacing office-holders at court with Catholic favourites, James
began to lose the confidence of many of his Anglican supporters.[84] Sunderland's purge of office-holders even extended to the King's Anglican
brothers-in-law and their supporters.[84] Catholics made up no more than one fiftieth of the English population.[85] In May 1686, James sought to obtain a ruling from the English common-law
courts that showed his power to dispense with Acts of Parliament was legal. He
dismissed judges who disagreed with him on this matter, as well as the Solicitor
General Heneage Finch.[86] The case, Godden v. Hales, affirmed his dispensing power,[87] with eleven out of the twelve judges in Godden ruling in favour of
the dispensing power.[88]
In 1687, James issued the Declaration of Indulgence, also known as the Declaration for Liberty of Conscience, in which he used
his dispensing power to negate the effect of laws punishing Catholics and
Protestant Dissenters.[89] He attempted to garner support for his tolerationist policy by giving a
speaking tour in the West of England in the summer of 1687. As part of this
tour, he gave a speech at Chester where he said, "suppose... there should
be a law made that all black men should be imprisoned, it would be unreasonable
and we had as little reason to quarrel with other men for being of different
[religious] opinions as for being of different complexions."[90] At the same time, James provided partial toleration in Scotland, using his
dispensing power to grant relief to Catholics and partial relief to
Presbyterians.[91]
In 1688, James ordered the Declaration read from the
pulpits of every Anglican church, further alienating the Anglican bishops
against the Catholic governor of their church.[92] While the Declaration elicited some thanks from Catholics and dissenters,
it left the Established Church, the traditional ally of the monarchy, in the
difficult position of being forced to erode its own privileges.[92] James provoked further opposition by attempting to reduce the Anglican
monopoly on education.[93] At the University of Oxford, James offended Anglicans by allowing Catholics to hold important
positions in Christ Church and
University College, two of Oxford's largest colleges. He also attempted to force the
Protestant Fellows of Magdalen College to elect Anthony Farmer, a
man of generally ill repute who was believed to be secretly Catholic,[94] as their president when the Protestant incumbent died, a violation of the
Fellows' right to elect a candidate of their own choosing.[93]
In 1687 James prepared to pack Parliament with his
supporters so that it would repeal the Test Act and the penal laws. James was
convinced by addresses from Dissenters that he had their support and so could
dispense with relying on Tories and Anglicans. James instituted a wholesale
purge of those in offices under the crown opposed to James's plan, appointing
new lords-lieutenant and remodelling the corporations governing towns and
livery companies.[95] In October James gave orders for the lords-lieutenant in the provinces to
provide three standard questions to all members of the Commission of the Peace:
1. Would they consent to the repeal of the Test Act and the penal laws? 2.
Would they assist candidates who would do so? 3. Would they accept the
Declaration of Indulgence? During the first three months of 1688, hundreds of
those asked the three questions who gave hostile replies were dismissed.[96] Corporations were purged by agents, known as the regulators, who were
given wide discretionary powers in an attempt to create a permanent royal
electoral machine.[97] Most of the regulators were Baptists and the new town officials that they recommended included Quakers, Baptists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians and Catholics, as
well as Anglicans.[98] Finally, on 24 August 1688, James ordered the issue of writs for a general
election.[99] However, upon realising in September that William of Orange was going to
land in England, James withdrew the writs and subsequently wrote to the
lords-lieutenant to inquire over allegations of abuses committed during the
regulations and election preparations as part of the concessions James made to
win support.[100]
Glorious Revolution
In April 1688, James re-issued the Declaration of
Indulgence, subsequently ordering Anglican clergymen to read it in their
churches.[101] When seven Bishops,
including the Archbishop of Canterbury, submitted a petition requesting the reconsideration of the King's
religious policies, they were arrested and tried for seditious
libel.[102] Public alarm increased when Queen Mary gave birth to a Roman Catholic son
and heir, James Francis Edward on 10 June of that year.[103] When James's only possible successors were his two Protestant daughters,
Anglicans could see his pro-Catholic policies as a temporary phenomenon, but
when the Prince's birth opened the possibility of a permanent Catholic dynasty,
such men had to reconsider their position.[104] Threatened by a Catholic dynasty, several influential Protestants claimed
the child was "supposititious" and had been smuggled into the Queen's
bedchamber in a warming pan.[105] They had already entered into negotiations with William, Prince of Orange,
when it became known the Queen was pregnant, and the birth of James's son
reinforced their convictions.[106]
John Churchill had been a member of James's household for many years,
but defected to William of Orange in 1688.
On 30 June 1688, a group of seven
Protestant nobles invited the Prince of
Orange to come to England with an army.[107] By September, it had become clear that William sought to invade.[108] Believing that his own army would be adequate, James refused the
assistance of Louis XIV, fearing that the English would oppose French
intervention.[108] When William arrived on 5 November 1688, many Protestant officers,
including Churchill, defected
and joined William, as did James's own daughter, Princess Anne.[109] James lost his nerve and declined to attack the invading army, despite his
army's numerical superiority.[110] On 11 December, James tried to flee to France, allegedly first throwing
the Great Seal of the Realm into the River Thames.[111][112] He was captured in Kent; later, he was released and
placed under Dutch protective guard. Having no desire to make James a martyr,
the Prince of Orange let him escape on 23 December.[111] James was received by his cousin and ally, Louis XIV, who offered him a
palace and a pension.
William convened a Convention Parliament to decide how to handle James's flight. While the Parliament refused to
depose him, they declared that James, having fled to France and dropped the
Great Seal into the Thames, had effectively abdicated the throne, and that the throne had thereby become vacant.[113] To fill this vacancy, James's daughter Mary was declared Queen; she was to
rule jointly with her husband William, who would be king. The Parliament
of Scotland on 11 April 1689,
declared James to have forfeited the throne.[114] The English Parliament passed a Bill
of Rights that denounced
James for abusing his power. The abuses charged to James included the
suspension of the Test Acts, the prosecution of the Seven Bishops for merely
petitioning the crown, the establishment of a standing army, and the imposition
of cruel punishments.[115] The Bill also declared that
henceforth, no Roman Catholic was permitted to ascend the English throne, nor
could any English monarch marry a Roman Catholic.[116]
Later years
War in Ireland
With the assistance of French troops, James landed in
Ireland in March 1689.[117] The Irish Parliament did not follow the example of the English Parliament; it declared that
James remained King and passed a massive bill of attainder against those who had rebelled against him.[118] At James's urging, the Irish Parliament passed an Act for Liberty of
Conscience that granted religious freedom to all Roman Catholics and
Protestants in Ireland.[119] James worked to build an army in Ireland, but was ultimately defeated at
the Battle of the Boyne on 1 July 1690 when William arrived, personally leading an army to defeat
James and reassert English control.[120] James fled to France once more, departing from Kinsale, never to return to any of his former kingdoms.[120] Because he deserted his Irish supporters, James became known in Ireland as
Séamus an Chaca or 'James the Shit'.[121][122] In contrast to this popular perception, Breandán Ó Buachalla argued that "Irish political poetry for most of the eighteenth
century is essentially Jacobite poetry",[123] and both Ó Buachalla and Éamonn Ó Ciardha argued that James and his successors played a central role as messianic
figures throughout the eighteenth century for all classes in Ireland.[124]
Return to exile and death
In France, James was allowed to live in the royal château
of Saint-Germain-en-Laye.[125] James's wife and some of his supporters fled with him, including the Earl of Melfort; most, but not all, were Roman Catholic.[126] In 1692, James's last child, Louisa Maria Teresa, was born.[127] Some supporters in England attempted to assassinate William III to restore James to the throne in 1696, but the plot failed
and the backlash made James's cause less popular.[128] Louis XIV's offer to have James elected King of Poland in the same year was rejected, for James feared that acceptance of the
Polish crown might (in the minds of the English people) render him incapable of
being King of England. After Louis concluded peace with William in 1697, he
ceased to offer much in the way of assistance to James.[129]
During his last years, James lived as an austere penitent.[130] He wrote a memorandum for his son advising him on how to govern England,
specifying that Catholics should possess one Secretary of State, one
Commissioner of the Treasury, the Secretary at War, with the majority of the
officers in the army.[131]
He died of a brain
haemorrhage on 16 September 1701 at Saint-Germain-en-Laye.[132][133] His body was laid to rest in a coffin at the Chapel of Saint Edmund in the
Church of the English Benedictines in the Rue St. Jacques in Paris, with a funeral oration by Henri-Emmanuel de Roquette.[132] James was not buried, but put in one of the side chapels. Lights were kept
burning round his coffin until the French
Revolution. In 1734, the Archbishop of Paris heard evidence to support James's canonisation, but nothing came of it.[132] During the French Revolution, James's tomb was raided.[134]
Succession
James's son was known as "James III and VIII" to his
supporters, and "The Old Pretender" to his enemies.
James's younger daughter Anne
succeeded to the throne when William III died in 1702. The Act of Settlement provided that, if the line of succession established in the Bill of Rights
were extinguished, the crown would go to a German cousin, Sophia,
Electress of Hanover, and to her Protestant
heirs.[135] Sophia was a granddaughter of James VI and I through his eldest daughter, Elizabeth Stuart, the sister of King Charles I.
Thus, when Anne died in 1714 (less than two months after the death of Sophia),
the crown was inherited by George I,
Sophia's son, the Elector of Hanover and Anne's second cousin.[135]
James's son James Francis Edward was recognised as King at his father's death by Louis XIV of France and
James's remaining supporters (later known as Jacobites) as "James III and VIII."[136] He led a rising in
Scotland in 1715 shortly after George I's accession, but was defeated.[137] Jacobites rose again in
1745 led by Charles Edward Stuart, James II's grandson, and were again defeated.[138] Since then, no serious attempt to restore the Stuart heir has been made.
Charles's claims passed to his younger brother Henry Benedict Stuart, the Dean of the College of Cardinals of the Catholic Church.[139] Henry was the last of James II's legitimate descendants, and no relative
has publicly acknowledged the Jacobite claim
since his death in 1807.[140]
Historiography
Historical analysis of James II has been somewhat revised
since Whig
historians, led by Lord Macaulay, cast James as a cruel absolutist and his reign as "tyranny which
approached to insanity".[141] Subsequent scholars, such as G.
M. Trevelyan (Macaulay's great-nephew) and David Ogg, while more
balanced than Macaulay, still characterised James as a tyrant, his attempts at
religious tolerance as a fraud, and his reign as an aberration in the course of
British history.[142] In 1892, A. W. Ward
wrote for the Dictionary of National Biography that James was "obviously a political and religious bigot",
although never devoid of "a vein of patriotic sentiment"; "his
conversion to the church of Rome made the emancipation of his fellow-catholics
in the first instance, and the recovery of England for catholicism in the
second, the governing objects of his policy."[143]
Hilaire Belloc (a
Roman Catholic) broke with this tradition in 1928, casting James as an
honourable man and a true advocate for freedom of conscience, and his enemies
"men in the small clique of great fortunes ... which destroyed the
ancient monarchy of the English."[144] However, he observed that James "concluded the Catholic church to be
the sole authoritative voice on earth, and thenceforward ... he not only
stood firm against surrender but on no single occasion contemplated the least
compromise or by a word would modify the impression made." By the 1960s
and 1970s, Maurice Ashley and
Stuart Prall began to reconsider James's motives in granting religious
toleration, while still taking note of James's autocratic rule.[145] Modern historians have moved away from the school of thought that preached
the continuous march of progress and democracy, Ashley contending that
"history is, after all, the story of human beings and individuals, as well
as of the classes and the masses."[146] He cast James II and William III as "men of ideals as well as human
weaknesses."[146] John Miller, writing in 2000, accepted the claims of James's absolutism,
but argued that "his main concern was to secure religious liberty and
civil equality for Catholics. Any 'absolutist' methods ... were
essentially means to that end."[147] In 2004, W. A. Speck
wrote in the new Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography that "James was
genuinely committed to religious toleration, but also sought to increase the
power of the crown."[148] He added that, unlike the government of the Netherlands, "James was
too autocratic to combine freedom of conscience with popular government. He
resisted any check on the monarch's power. That is why his heart was not in the
concessions he had to make in 1688. He would rather live in exile with his
principles intact than continue to reign as a limited monarch."[148]
Tim Harris's conclusions from his 2006 book summarised
the ambivalence of modern scholarship towards James II:
The jury will doubtless remain out on James for a long
time ... Was he an egotistical bigot ... a tyrant who rode roughshod
over the will of the vast majority of his subjects (at least in England and
Scotland) ... simply naïve, or even perhaps plain stupid, unable to
appreciate the realities of political power ... Or was he a
well-intentioned and even enlightened ruler—an enlightened despot well ahead of
his time, perhaps—who was merely trying to do what he thought was best for his
subjects?[149]
In 2009, Steven
Pincus confronted that scholarly ambivalence in 1688: The
First Modern Revolution. Pincus claims that James's reign must be
understood within a context of economic change and European politics, and makes
two major assertions about James II. The first of these is that James
purposefully "followed the French Sun King, Louis XIV, in trying to create
a modern Catholic polity. This involved not only trying to Catholicize
England ... but also creating a modern, centralizing, and extremely
bureaucratic state apparatus."[150] The second is that James was undone in 1688 far less by Protestant
reaction against Catholicization than by nationwide hostile reaction against
his intrusive bureaucratic state and taxation apparatus, expressed in massive
popular support for William of Orange's armed invasion of England. Pincus
presents James as neither naïve nor stupid nor egotistical. Instead, readers
are shown an intelligent, clear-thinking strategically motivated monarch whose
vision for a French authoritarian political model and alliance clashed with,
and lost out to, alternative views that favoured an entrepreneurial Dutch
economic model, feared French power, and were outraged by James's
authoritarianism.
Scott Sowerby countered Pincus's thesis in 2013 in Making
Toleration: The Repealers and the Glorious Revolution. He noted that
English taxes remained low during James II's reign, at about 4% of the English
national income, and thus it was unlikely that James could have built a
bureaucratic state on the model of Louis XIV's France, where taxes were at
least twice as high as a proportion of GDP.[151] Sowerby also contends that James's policies of religious toleration
attracted substantial support from religious nonconformists, including Quakers,
Baptists, Congregationalists and Presbyterians, who were attracted by the
king's push for a new "Magna Carta for liberty of conscience".[152] The king was overthrown, in Sowerby's view, largely because of fears among
the Dutch and English elites that James might be aligning himself with Louis
XIV in a supposed "holy league" to destroy Protestantism across
northern Europe.[153] Sowerby presents James's reign as a struggle between those who believed
that the king was sincerely devoted to liberty of conscience and those who were
sceptical of the king's espousals of toleration and believed that he had a
hidden agenda to overthrow English Protestantism.
Titles, styles, honours, and
arms
Titles and styles
Half-Crown coin of James II,
1686
·
31 December 1660 – 6
February 1685: The Duke of Albany
·
6 February 1685 – 16
September 1701: His Majesty The King
The official style of James in England was "James
the Second, by the Grace of God, King of England, Scotland, France and
Ireland, Defender
of the Faith, etc." The claim to France was only nominal, and was asserted by every English King from Edward III to George III,
regardless of the amount of French territory actually controlled. In Scotland,
he was "James the Seventh, by the Grace of God, King of Scotland, England,
France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc."[2]
Honours
Arms
Prior to his accession, James's coat of arms was the royal
arms (which he later inherited), differenced by a label of three points Ermine.[156] His arms as king were: Quarterly, I
and IV Grandquarterly, Azure three fleurs-de-lis Or
(for France) and Gules three lions passant guardant in pale Or
(for England);
II Or a lion rampant within a double tressure flory-counter-flory Gules (for Scotland);
III Azure a harp Or stringed Argent (for Ireland).
Coat of arms of James II of
England
Coat of arms of James VII in
Scotland
In popular culture
James is a character in the novel The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo. He
was portrayed by Josef Moser in the 1921 Austrian silent film The
Grinning Face and by Sam
De Grasse in the 1928 silent film The Man Who Laughs.
He has also been portrayed by Gibb
McLaughlin in the 1926 silent film Nell Gwynne, based on a
novel by Joseph Shearing, Lawrence
Anderson in the 1934 film Nell Gwyn, Vernon
Steele in the 1935 film Captain Blood, based on the novel by Rafael
Sabatini, Douglas Matthews in the 1938 BBC TV drama Thank You, Mr. Pepys, Henry
Oscar in the 1948 film Bonnie Prince Charlie, John Westbrook in
the 1969 BBC TV series The First Churchills, Guy Henry in
the 1995 film England, My England, the story of the composer Henry
Purcell, and Charlie Creed-Miles in the 2003 BBC TV miniseries Charles
II: The Power & the Passion.
The squabbling surrounding James's kingship, the Monmouth
Rebellion, the Glorious Revolution, James's abdication, and William of Orange's
subsequent accession to the throne are themes in Neal
Stephenson's 2003 novel Quicksilver.
Issue[edit]
James II & VII
|
Grandchildren
|
Name
|
Birth
|
Death
|
Notes
|
22 October 1660
|
5 May 1661
|
|
|
30 April 1662
|
28 December 1694
|
||
12 July 1663
|
20 June 1667
|
|
|
6 February 1665
|
1 August 1714
|
||
4 July 1666
|
22 May 1667
|
|
|
14 September 1667
|
8 June 1671
|
|
|
Henrietta
|
13 January 1669
|
15 November 1669
|
|
Catherine
|
9 February 1671
|
5 December 1671
|
|
Catherine Laura
|
10 January 1675
|
3 October 1676
|
|
28 August 1676
|
2 March 1681
|
|
|
7 November 1677
|
12 December 1677
|
||
Elizabeth
|
1678
|
|
|
Charlotte Maria
|
16 August 1682
|
16 October 1682
|
|
10 June 1688
|
1 January 1766
|
||
28 June 1692
|
20 April 1712
|
|
|
1667
|
3 April 1730
|
Married first Henry Waldegrave; had issue. Married secondly Piers Butler, 3rd Viscount Galmoye; no
issue.
|
|
21 August 1670
|
12 June 1734
|
||
August 1673
|
December 1702
|
||
Arabella FitzJames
|
1674
|
7 November 1704
|
Became a nun under the name Ignatia.
|
Catherine Darnley
|
c. 1681
|
13 March 1743
|
Alleged daughter. Married firstly, James Annesley, 3rd Earl of Anglesey and
had issue,
married secondly, John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normanby and had issue.[158] |
James Darnley
|
1684
|
1685
|
|
Charles Darnley
|
Ancestors
showAncestors of James II
of England
|
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|
See also
Notes
1.
Jump up ^ An assertion found in many
sources that James II died 6 September 1701 (17 September 1701 New Style) may result from a miscalculation done by an author of
anonymous "An Exact Account of the Sickness and Death of the Late King
James II, as also of the Proceedings at St. Germains thereupon, 1701, in a
letter from an English gentleman in France to his friend in London"
(Somers Tracts, ed. 1809–1815, XI, pp. 339–342). The account reads: "And
on Friday the 17th instant, about three in the afternoon, the king died, the
day he always fasted in memory of our blessed Saviour's passion, the day he
ever desired to die on, and the ninth hour, according to the Jewish account,
when our Saviour was crucified." As 17 September 1701 New Style falls on a Saturday and the author insists that James
died on Friday, "the day he ever desired to die on", an inevitable
conclusion is that the author miscalculated the date, which later made it to
various reference works. See "English Historical Documents
1660–1714", ed. by Andrew Browning (London and New York: Routledge, 2001),
136–138.
3.
Jump up ^ The Convention Parliament of England deemed James to have abdicated on 11 December 1688, and
the Parliament of Scotland declared him to have forfeited the throne on 11 April
1689.
27.
Jump up ^ Miller, 46. Samuel Pepys
recorded in his diary that James "did eye my wife mightily". Ibid.
James's taste in women was often maligned, with Gilbert Burnet
famously remarking that James's mistresses must have been "given him by
his priests as a penance." Miller, 59.
32.
Jump up ^ Spelling modernized for
clarity; quoted by Adrian Tinniswood (2003). 80. By Permission of Heaven:
The Story of the Great Fire of London. London: Jonathan Cape.
33.
Jump up ^ Miller, 58–59; Callow,
144–145. Callow writes that Anne "made the greatest single impact upon his
thinking" and that she converted shortly after the Restoration,
"almost certainly before her husband". Ibid., 144.
43.
Jump up ^ Miller, 84; Waller, 94–97.
According to Turner, James's reaction to the agreement was "The King shall
be obeyed, and I would be glad if all his subjects would learn of me to obey
him". Turner, 132.
60.
Jump up ^ Harris, 45. The English
coronation only crowned James King of England and Ireland; James was never
crowned in Scotland, but was proclaimed King of Scotland around the same time.
79.
Jump up ^ Macaulay, 242; Harris,
480–481. Covenanters, as they did not recognize James (or any uncovenanted king) as a
legitimate ruler, would not petition James for relief from the penal laws.
94.
Jump up ^ Farmer's exact religious
affiliation is unclear. Macaulay says Farmer "pretended to turn
Papist". Prall, at 148, calls him a "Catholic sympathizer".
Miller, at 170, says "although he had not declared himself a Catholic, it
was believed he was no longer an Anglican." Ashley, at 89, does not refer
to Farmer by name, but only as the King's Catholic nominee. All sources agree
that Farmer's bad reputation as a "person of scandalous character"
was as much a deterrent to his nomination as his uncertain religious loyalties.
See, e.g., Prall, 148.
112.
Jump up ^ The story is of questionable
authority: see Hilary Jenkinson, "What happened to the Great Seal of James
II?", Antiquaries Journal, vol. 23 (1943), pp. 1–13.
113.
Jump up ^ Miller, 209. Harris, 320–328,
analyses the legal nature of the abdication; James did not agree that he had
abdicated.
121.
Jump up ^ Fitzpatrick, Brendan, New
Gill History of Ireland 3: Seventeenth-Century Ireland – The War of Religions(Dublin,
1988), page 253 | isbn=0-7171-1626-3
122.
Jump up ^ Szechi, Daniel (1994). The
Jacobites, Britain and Europe, 1688–1788. 48: Manchester University Press. ISBN 0-7190-3774-3.
123.
Jump up ^ Ó Buachalla, Breandán 'Irish
Jacobite Poetry' The Irish Review No.12 Spring/Summer 1992, p40.
124.
Jump up ^ Ó Buachalla, Breandán, Aisling
Ghéar, An Clóchomhar Tta, Baile Átha Cliath, 1996, and Ó Ciardha, Éamonn, Ireland
and the Jacobite Cause, 1685-1766, Four Courts, Dublin, 2002.
127.
Jump up ^ Scottish Royal Lineage – The House of Stuart Part 4 of 6 online at burkes-peerage.net. Retrieved 9 February 2008
133.
Jump up ^ Parish register of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, with transcription, at Association Frontenac-Amériques (in French)
134.
Jump up ^ Miller, 240; Waller, 401;
MacLeod, 349. MacLeod and Waller say all of James's remains were lost. McFerran says parts of his bowel sent to the parish church of St.
Germain-en-Laye were rediscovered in 1824 and are the only known remains left.
The English Illustrated Magazines article on
St. Germain from September 1901 concurs. Hilliam, 205. Hilliam disputes that
his remains were either scattered or lost, stating that when revolutionaries
broke into the church, they were amazed at the body's preservation and it was
put on public exhibition where miracles were said to have happened. Hilliam
states that the body was then kept "above ground" until George IV
heard about it and ordered the body buried in the parish church of St
Germain-en-Laye in 1824.
143.
Jump up ^
"James II of England". Dictionary of National
Biography. London: Smith,
Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
148.
^ Jump up to:
a b W. A. Speck,
"James II and VII (1633–1701)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University
Press, Sept. 2004; online edn, May 2006. Retrieved 15 October 2007. He
"wished that all his subjects could be as convinced as he was that the
Catholic church was the one true church. He was also convinced that the
established church was maintained artificially by penal laws that proscribed
nonconformity. If these were removed, and conversions to Catholicism were
encouraged, then many would take place. In the event his optimism was
misplaced, for few converted. James underestimated the appeal of protestantism
in general and the Church of England in particular. His was the zeal and even
bigotry of a narrow-minded convert..."
154.
^ Jump up to:
a b c d e Weir, Alison
(1996). 258. Britain's Royal Families: The Complete Genealogy. Revised
Edition. Random House, London. ISBN 0-7126-7448-9.
155.
Jump up ^ The London Gazette: no. 1693. p. 2. 6 February 1681.;
The London Gazette: no. 1728. p. 4. 8 June 1682.;
The London Gazette: no. 1849. p. 1. 6 August 1683.
The London Gazette: no. 1728. p. 4. 8 June 1682.;
The London Gazette: no. 1849. p. 1. 6 August 1683.
References
·
Ashley, Maurice, The
Glorious Revolution of 1688, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1966. ISBN 0-340-00896-2.
·
Belloc, Hilaire, James the Second, J.B.
Lippincott Co, Philadelphia 1928, popular; Catholic perspective
·
Callow, John, The Making
of King James II: The Formative Years of a King, Sutton Publishing, Ltd,
Stroud, Gloucestershire, 2000. ISBN 0-7509-2398-9.
·
Harris, Tim, Revolution:
The Great Crisis of the British Monarchy, 1685–1720, Penguin Books, Ltd.,
2006. ISBN 0-7139-9759-1.
·
Hilliam, David, Kings,
Queens, Bones & Bastards, Sutton Publishing, Gloucestershire, 1998. ISBN 0-7509-3553-7.
·
Jones, J. R. The
Revolution of 1688 in England, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988. ISBN 0-297-99467-0.
·
Kenyon, J.P., The Stuart Constitution 1603–1688, Documents and Commentary, 2d
ed., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1986. ISBN 0-521-31327-9.
·
MacLeod, John, Dynasty,
the Stuarts, 1560–1807, Hodder and Stoughton, London 1999. ISBN 0-340-70767-4.
·
Macaulay,
Thomas Babington, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second. Popular Edition in Two Volumes.
Longmans, London 1889.
·
Ó Buachalla, Breandán,
Aisling Ghéar, An Clóchomhar Tta, Baile Átha Cliath, 1996 ISBN 0-903758-99-7
·
Ó Ciardha, Éamonn, Ireland
and the Jacobite Cause, 1685-1766, Four Courts, Dublin, 2002. ISBN 1-85182-534-7
·
Pincus, Steven. 1688: The
First Modern Revolution (2009) New Haven & London, Yale University
Press, ISBN 0-300-11547-4
·
Prall, Stuart, The
Bloodless Revolution: England, 1688, Anchor Books, Garden City, New York
1972.
·
Royle, Trevor, The
British Civil Wars: The Wars of the Three Kingdoms, 1638–1660, Little,
Brown, 2004. ISBN 0-312-29293-7.
·
Sowerby, Scott, Making
Toleration: The Repealers and the Glorious Revolution (2013) Cambridge,
Mass., & London, Harvard University Press, ISBN 978-0-674-07309-8.
·
Speck, W.A. James II
(2002)
·
Turner, Francis C., James
II, Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, 1948
·
Waller, Maureen, Ungrateful
Daughters: The Stuart Princesses who Stole Their Father's Crown, Hodder
& Stoughton, London, 2002. ISBN 0-312-30711-X.
Further reading
·
DeKrey, Gary S.
"Between Revolutions: Re-appraising the Restoration in Britain," History
Compass 2008 6(3): 738–773
·
Earle, Peter. The Life
and Times of James II (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1972)
·
Glassey, Lionel, ed. The
Reigns of Charles II and James VII and II (1997)
·
Goodlad, Graham. "
Before the Glorious Revolution: The Making of Absolute Monarchy?," History
Review. Issue: 58; 2007. pp 10+. Examines the Controversies Surrounding the
Development of Royal Power under Charles II and James II. in Questia
·
Miller, John. The Stuarts
(2004), 320pp; standard scholarly survey
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