James II & VII (14 October 1633 – 16 September
1701) was
King of England
and
Ireland as
James
II, and
Scotland
as
James VII, from 6 February 1685. He was the
last
Catholic monarch to reign
over the Kingdoms of
England,
Scotland, and
Ireland. Increasingly Britain's political
and religious leaders opposed him as too pro-French, too
pro-Catholic, and too much of an absolute monarch. When he produced
a Catholic heir the tension exploded and the leaders called on
William of Orange (his son in
law) to land an invasion army from the Netherlands. James fled
England (and thus abdicated) in the
Glorious Revolution of 1688. He was
replaced by William of Orange who became king as
William III, ruling jointly with his
wife (James's daughter)
Mary II.
Thus
William and Mary, both
Protestants, became joint rulers in 1689. James made one serious
attempt to recover his crowns, 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 the
summer of 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 his belief in
absolute monarchy and his attempts to
create
religious liberty for his
subjects. Both of these went against the wishes of the
English Parliament and of most of his
subjects. 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 three-year reign a struggle for supremacy between the
English Parliament and the Crown, resulting in his deposition, the
passage of the
English Bill of
Rights, and the
Hanoverian
succession.
Birth and early life
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. Later that same year, James was baptized by
William Laud, the
Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury. 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. 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.
Civil War
James was invested with the
Order of
the Garter in 1642, and created
Duke of
York on 22 January 1644.
As the King's disputes with the English Parliament grew into the English Civil War James stayed in Oxford
, a Royalist
stronghold. 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
. In 1648, he escaped from the Palace and from
there he went to The
Hague
in disguise. When Charles I was executed by
the rebels in 1649, monarchists proclaimed James's older brother,
Charles, as King Charles II.
Charles II
was recognized 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 at Jersey
, Charles was
unable to secure the crown of
England, and consequently fled to France
and
exile.
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. 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".
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. 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 larger diplomatic 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. During his term of service in the Spanish army,
James became friendly with two Irish Catholic brothers in the
Royalist entourage,
Peter
and
Richard
Talbot, and began to be somewhat estranged from his brother's
Anglican advisers. 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. Ultimately, he
declined the position; by the next year the situation in England
had sufficiently changed, and Charles II was proclaimed King.
Restoration
Marriage
After
Oliver Cromwell's death in
1658 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. Upon his brother's restoration,
James was created
Duke of Albany in
Scotland, to go along with his English title,
Duke of York. Upon his return to England, James
produced an immediate controversy by announcing his engagement to
Anne Hyde, the daughter of Charles' chief
minister,
Edward
Hyde. In 1659, while attempting to seduce her, James promised
he would marry Anne. Anne became pregnant in 1660, but following
the
Restoration and Charles's
return to power, no one at the royal court expected a prince to
marry a commoner, no matter what he had pledged beforehand.
Although nearly everyone, including Anne's father, urged the two
not to marry, they did so.
The couple was 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. Only two daughters survived:
Mary (born 30 April 1662) and
Anne (born 6 February 1665).
Samuel Pepys wrote that James was fond of his
children and his role as a father, writing that he played with them
"like an ordinary father", a contrast to the distant parenting
common to royals at the time. James's wife was devoted to him and
influenced many of his decisions. 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." 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. James commanded the
Royal Navy during the
Second (1665–67) and
Third Anglo-Dutch Wars (1672–74).
Following the
raid on the Medway
in 1667, James oversaw the survey and re-fortification of the
southern coast. 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 a sufficient salary to keep a sizeable
court household.
Following its capture by the English in 1664, the Dutch territory
of
New Netherland was named the
Province of New York in James's
honour. After the founding, the duke gave the colony to
proprieters, George Carteret and John Lord Berkeley.
Fort Orange
, 240 kilometres (150 miles) north on the Hudson River, was renamed Albany
after James's Scottish title. In 1683, he
became the governor of the
Hudson's
Bay Company, but did not take an active role in its governance.
James also headed the
Royal
African Company, a
slave trading
company.
Conversion to Catholicism
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. 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. 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.
Growing fears of Catholic influence at court led the English
Parliament to introduce a new
Test Act in
1673. Under this Act, all civil and military officials were
required to take an oath (in which they were required not only to
disavow the doctrine of
transubstantiation, but also denounce
certain practices of the Catholic Church as "superstitious and
idolatrous") and to receive the Eucharist under the auspices of the
Church of England. James refused
to perform both actions, instead choosing to relinquish the post of
Lord High Admiral. His conversion to Catholicism was thereby made
public.
Charles II opposed the conversion, ordering that James's daughters,
Mary and Anne, be raised as Protestants. Nevertheless, he allowed
James to marry the Catholic
Mary of
Modena, a fifteen-year-old Italian princess. James and Mary
were
married by proxy in a Catholic
ceremony on 20 September 1673. 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. Many of the English, distrustful
of Catholicism, regarded the new Duchess of York as an agent of the
Pope.
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). James acquiesced after his brother Charles and
William had agreed upon the marriage. 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 put the Duke of
York on the throne. 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. Some members of Parliament even proposed that
the crown go to Charles's illegitimate son,
James Scott, 1st Duke of
Monmouth. In 1679, with the
Exclusion
Bill in danger of passing, Charles II dissolved Parliament. Two
further
Parliaments
were elected in 1680 and 1681, but were dissolved for the same
reason. 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.
On the
orders of the King, James left England for Brussels
. In 1680, he was appointed Lord High
Commissioner of Scotland and took up residence at the Palace of
Holyroodhouse
in Edinburgh
in order to suppress an uprising and oversee royal
government. James returned to England for a time when
Charles was stricken ill and appeared to be near death. 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.
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. This conspiracy,
known as the
Rye House Plot,
backfired upon its conspirators and provoked a wave of sympathy for
the King and James. Several notable
Whigs, including the
Earl of Essex and the
King's illegitimate son, the
Duke of Monmouth, were
implicated. Monmouth initially confessed to complicity in the plot,
implicating fellow-plotters, but later recanted. Essex committed
suicide and Monmouth, along with several others, was obliged to
flee into Continental exile. Charles reacted to the plot by
increasing repression of Whigs and dissenters. Taking advantage of
James's rebounding popularity, Charles invited him back onto the
privy
council in 1684. While some in English Parliament remained wary
of the possibility of a Catholic king, the threat of excluding
James from the throne had passed.
Reign
Ascension to the throne
Charles died in 1685 after converting to Catholicism on his
deathbed. 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 no initial opposition to
his succession, and there were widespread reports of public
rejoicing at the orderly succession.
James wanted to
proceed quickly to the coronation, and was crowned at Westminster
Abbey
on 23 April 1685. The new
Parliament
that assembled in May 1685 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. 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. Parliament
granted James a generous life income, including all of the proceeds
of
tonnage and poundage and the
customs duties. James worked harder as king
than his brother had, but was less willing to compromise when his
advisers disagreed.
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. 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. Argyll sailed to Scotland and, on arriving there, raised
recruits mainly from amongst his own clan, the
Campbells.
The rebellion was quickly crushed, and
Argyll himself was captured at Inchinnan
on 18 June 1685. 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. 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. He attempted to raise recruits
but was unable to gather enough rebels to defeat even James's small
standing army.
Monmouth's rebellion attacked the King's
forces at night, in an attempt at surprise, but was defeated at the
Battle of
Sedgemoor
. The King's forces, led by Feversham and
Churchill, quickly dispersed the ill-prepared rebels.
Monmouth himself was
captured and executed at the Tower of London
on 15 July. 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. Some 250 of
the rebels were executed. While both rebellions were defeated
easily enough, the effect on James was to harden his resolve
against his enemies and to increase his suspicion of the
Dutch.
Absolutism and religious liberty
To protect himself from further rebellions, James sought safety in
an enlarged
standing army. 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. 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. When even the previously supportive
Parliament objected to these measures, James ordered Parliament
prorogued in November 1685,
never to meet again in his reign. 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.
James advocated repeal of the
penal laws
in all three of his kingdoms, but refused to allow those dissenters
who did not petition for relief to receive it. In his own words,
James expressed indignation that men had the impudence to advocate
repeal of the penal laws against Protestants. 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 which stated that "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". 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. 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 which 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.
James allowed Roman 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. James's
Jesuit confessor,
Edward Petre, was a particular object of
Protestant ire. 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. Sunderland's purge of office-holders even extended to
the King's Anglican brothers-in-law and their supporters. Catholics
made up no more than one fiftieth of the English population. In May
1686, James sought to obtain from the English common-law courts a
ruling which showed that 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. The
case,
Godden v. Hales, affirmed his dispensing
power, with eleven out of the twelve judges in
Godden
ruling in favour of the dispensing power.
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. 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." At the same time, James provided partial
toleration in Scotland, using his dispensing power to grant relief
to Catholics and partial relief to Presbyterians.
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. 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. James provoked further opposition by attempting to
reduce the Anglican monopoly on education.
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, as their president when the Protestant incumbent
died, a violation of the Fellows' right to elect a candidate of
their own choosing.
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. In August the lieutenancy was remodelled
and in September over one thousand members of the city livery
companies were ejected. In October James gave orders for the lords
lieutenants in the provinces to provide three standard questions to
all members of the Commission of the Peace: would they consent to
the repeal of the Test Act and the penal laws; would they assist
candidates who would do so; and they were requested to accept the
Declaration of Indulgence. In December it was announced that all
the offices of deputy lieutenants and Justices of the Peace would
be revised. Therefore, during the first three months of 1688,
hundreds of those asked the three questions who gave hostile
replies were dismissed. More far-reaching purges were applied to
the towns: in November a regulating committee was founded to
operate the purges. Corporations were purged by agents given wide
discretionary powers in an attempt to create a permanent royal
electoral machine. Finally, on 24 August 1688, James ordered writs
to be issued for a general election. However, upon realising in
October that William of Orange was going to land in England, James
withdrew the writs and 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 in
order to win support.
Glorious Revolution
In April 1688, James re-issued the Declaration of Indulgence,
subsequently ordering Anglican clergymen to read it in their
churches. When the
Archbishop
of Canterbury William Sancroft
and six other bishops (known as the
Seven
Bishops) submitted a petition requesting the reconsideration of
the King's religious policies, they were arrested and tried for
seditious libel. Public alarm
increased when Queen Mary gave birth to a Catholic son and heir,
James Francis Edward on
10 June of that year. When James's only possible successors were
his two Protestant daughters, moderate Anglicans could see his
pro-Catholic policies as a temporary aberration; the Prince's birth
opened the possibility of a permanent Catholic dynasty, and led
such men to reconsider their patience. Threatened by a Catholic
dynasty, several influential Protestants claimed the child was
"suppositious" and had been smuggled into the Queen's bedchamber in
a warming pan. 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.
On 30
June 1688, a group of Protestant nobles, later known as the
Immortal Seven, invited the Prince of
Orange to come to England
with an army. By September, it had become
clear that William sought to invade. Believing that his own army
would be adequate, James refused the assistance of Louis XIV,
fearing that the English would oppose French intervention. When
William arrived on 5 November 1688, many Protestant officers,
including Churchill, defected and joined William, as did James's
own daughter, Princess
Anne.
James lost his nerve, and declined to attack the invading army,
despite his own numerical superiority.
On 11 December, James
attempted to flee to France
, first
throwing the Great Seal of the
Realm into the River Thames.
James 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. 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. 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 him to have forfeited the throne (due to the
Scottish Parliament upholding of the belief in
Divine Right of Kings, abdication was
not a valid option). The English Parliament passed a
Bill of Rights that charged James II
with abusing his power; amongst other things, it criticised 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. The Bill also
stipulated that no Catholic would henceforth be permitted to ascend
to the English throne, nor could any English monarch marry a
Catholic.
Later years
War in Ireland
With the assistance of French troops, James landed in Ireland in
March 1689. 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. At
James's urging, the Irish Parliament passed an Act for Liberty of
Conscience that granted religious freedom to all Catholics and
Protestants in Ireland. 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.
James fled to France once more, departing
from Kinsale
, never to return to any of his former
kingdoms. Because he deserted his Irish supporters, James
became known in Ireland as
Séamus an Chaca or 'James the
be-shitten'.
Return to exile
In France, James was allowed to live in the royal château of
Saint-Germain-en-Laye. James's
wife and some of his supporters fled with him, including the
Earl of Melfort;
most, but not all, were Catholic. In 1692, James's last child,
Louisa Maria Teresa, was
born. Some supporters in England attempted to restore James to the
throne by assassinating William III in 1696, but the plot failed
and the backlash made James's cause less popular. 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.
During his last years, James lived as an austere
penitent. 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. He died of a
brain
hemorrhage on 16 September 1701 at
Saint-Germain-en-Laye. 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. In
1734, the
Archbishop of Paris
heard evidence to support James's canonization, but nothing came of
it. During the
French Revolution,
James's tomb was raided and his remains scattered.
Succession
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 to be
extinguished, then the crown would go to a German cousin,
Sophia, Electress of Hanover, and to her
Protestant heirs. Thus, when Anne died in 1714 (fewer 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.
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
Jacobite) as "James III and VIII." He led
a
rising in Scotland
in 1715 shortly after George I's accession, but was defeated.
Jacobites
rose
again in 1745 led by
Charles
Edward Stuart, James II's grandson, and were again defeated.
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. Henry was the last of James II's legitimate
descendants, and no relative has publicly acknowledged the
Jacobite claim since then.
Historiography
Historical analysis of James II has gone through considerable
change since he was overthrown. Initially,
Whiggish historians, led by
Lord Macaulay, cast James as a
cruel absolutist and his reign as "tyranny which approached to
insanity". Subsequent scholars, such as
G. M.
Trevelyan (Macaulay's great nephew)
and David Ogg, while more balanced than Macaulay, continued
Macaulay's tradition into the twentieth century, characterizing
James as a tyrant, his attempts at religious tolerance as a fraud,
and his reign as an aberration in the course of British history. 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."
Hilaire Belloc broke with this
tradition in 1928. Belloc cast James as an honorable man and a true
advocate for freedom of conscience, and his enemies as "men in the
small clique of great fortunes ... which destroyed the ancient
monarchy of the English." Belloc's thesis failed to alter the
course of historical opinion at the time, but 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. These modern authors moved away from
the school of thought that preached inevitability of the
Glorious Revolution and the continuous
march of progress and democracy. "[H]istory is,", Ashley wrote,
"after all, the story of human beings and individuals, as well as
of the classes and the masses." He cast James II and William III as
"men of ideals as well as human weaknesses." 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." 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." 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."
Tim Harris's conclusions from his 2006 book summarize the
crossroads of modern scholarship on James II:
Titles and styles
- 14 October 1633 – 6 February 1685: Prince
James
- 27 January 1644 – 6 February 1685: The Duke of
York
- 10 May 1659 – 6 February 1685: The Earl of
Ulster
- 31 December 1660 – 6 February 1685: The Duke
of Albany
- *before '1 January 1665 – 6 February 1685: His
Royal Highness ;
;
- 6 February 1685 – 11 December 1688: His
Majesty The King
- 11 December 1688 – 16 September 1701: His
Majesty King James II
- Jacobite: His Majesty The King
The official style of James II 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.)

Half-Crown coin of James II,
1686
was created "
Duke of Normandy" by
King Louis XIV of France, 31 December 1660. This was a few months
after the restoration of his brother
Charles II to the English and Irish
thrones (Charles II had been crowned King of Scotland in 1651), and
probably was done as a political gesture of support for James -
since his brother also would have claimed the title "Duke of
Normandy".
Arms
Prior to his accession, James's
arms
were those of the kingdom (which he later inherited), differenced
by a
label argent of three points ermine, although it is
noted that, when it become clear that his position as
heir-presumptive was not under threat, a
label argent of three
points was sometimes used. 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 tressure flory-counter-flory Gules (for Scotland);
III Azure a harp Or stringed Argent (for Ireland).
In popular culture
Film and television
James has been portrayed on screen by:
Books
- The Long Shadow, Volume 6 of The Morland Dynasty, a series of
historical novels by author Cynthia Harrod-Eagles covers James's
deposition and exile, seen through the eyes of the fictional
Morland family
Ancestors
Issue
Children of James II of
England
Name |
Birth |
Death |
Notes |
By Anne
Hyde |
Charles, Duke of Cambridge |
22 October 1660 |
5 May 1661 |
|
Mary II |
30 April 1662 |
28 December 1694 |
married 1677, William III,
Prince of Orange; no issue |
James, Duke of
Cambridge |
12 July 1663 |
20 June 1667 |
|
Anne |
6 February 1665 |
1 August 1714 |
married 1683, Prince George
of Denmark; no surviving issue |
Charles, Duke of
Kendal |
4 July 1666 |
22 May 1667 |
|
Edgar, Duke of
Cambridge |
14 September 1667 |
8 June 1671 |
|
Henrietta |
13 January 1669 |
15 November 1669 |
|
Catherine |
9 February 1671 |
5 December 1671 |
|
By Mary of
Modena |
Catherine Laura |
10 January 1675 |
3 October 1676 |
died of convulsions. |
Isabel |
28 August 1676 |
2 March 1681 |
|
Charles, Duke of Cambridge |
7 November 1677 |
12 December 1677 |
died of smallpox |
Elizabeth |
1678 |
c. 1678 |
|
Charlotte Maria |
16 August 1682 |
16 October 1682 |
died of convulsions |
James, Prince of Wales
Old Pretender |
10 June 1688 |
1 January 1766 |
married 1719, Mary
Sobieski; had issue |
Louisa Maria
Teresa |
28 June 1692 |
20 April 1712 |
|
By Arabella
Churchill |
Henrietta FitzJames |
1667 |
3 April 1730 |
Married first Henry Waldegrave; had
issue. Married secondly Piers Butler, 3rd Viscount
Galmoye; no issue. |
James
FitzJames, 1st Duke of Berwick |
21 August 1670 |
12 June 1734 |
|
Henry
FitzJames, 1st Duke of Albemarle |
August, 1673 |
December, 1702 |
|
Arabella FitzJames |
1674 |
7 November 1704 |
Became a nun. |
By Catherine Sedley |
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. |
James Darnley |
1684 |
1685 |
|
See also
Notes
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,
Thrupp, Stroud, Gloucestershire
, 2000. ISBN 0750923989.
- Clarke, James S. (Editor), The Life of James II,
London, 1816
- Dekrey, Gary S. "Between Revolutions: Re-appraising the
Restoration in Britain," History Compass 2008 6(3):
738-773,
- Devine, T. M., The Scottish Nation 1700-2007,
Penguin Books, London, 2006. ISBN 014102769X
- 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
- Hallam, Henry, The
Constitutional History of England from the Accession of Henry VII
to the Death of George II, W. Clowes & Sons, London,
1855.
- Harris, Tim, Revolution: The Great Crisis of the British
Monarchy, 1685–1720, Penguin Books, Ltd., 2006. ISBN
0713997591.
- "James II," Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed. London,
1911: Cambridge University Press.
- Kenyon, J.P., The
Stuart Constitution 1603–1688, Documents and Commentary, 2d
ed., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1986. ISBN
0521313279.
- MacLeod, John, Dynasty, the Stuarts, 1560–1807, Hodder
and Stoughton, London 1999. ISBN 0340707674.
- Macaulay, Thomas
Babington, The
History of England from the Accession of James the Second.
Popular Edition in Two Volumes. Longmans, London
1889.
- Miller, John. James II (3rd ed. 2000) excerpt and text search, Miller sees James as
more interested in his own survival and tolerance for Catholics and
suggests he did not have a grand plan to Catholicize England
- Miller, John. The Stuarts (2004), 320pp; standard
scholarly survey
- Miller, John. The Glorious Revolution, (2nd ed. 1997)
excerpt and text search
- McFerran, Noel S. (2003).
"James II and VII."
- Mullett, M. James II and English Politics 1678-1688
(1993) excerpt and text search
- Pincus, Steve. 1688: The First Modern Revolution
(2009) excerpt and text search, influential new
interpretation
- 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
0312292937.
- Sowerby, Scott, "Of Different Complexions: Religious Diversity
and National Identity in James II's Toleration Campaign,"
English Historical Review, vol. 124 (2009),
pp. 29-52.
- Speck, W.A. James II (2002), argues James did not seek
to impose Catholicism, but his ambitions went far beyond equal
treatment for Catholics.
- 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 031230711X.
External links