16
September 1701 A.D. King
James II Dies.
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James II & VII
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Portrait by Peter
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Reign
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6 February 1685 –
11 December 1688 |
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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
- 1 Early life
- 2 Restoration
- 2.1 First marriage
- 2.2 Military and political offices
- 2.3 Conversion to Roman Catholicism and second marriage
- 2.4 Exclusion Crisis
- 2.5 Return to favour
- 3 Reign
- 4 Glorious Revolution
- 5 Later years
- 6 Succession
- 7 Historiography
- 8 Titles, styles, honours, and arms
- 9 In popular culture
- 10 Issue
- 11 Ancestors
- 12 See also
- 13 Notes
- 14 References
- 15 Further reading
- 16 External links
Early life
James with his father, Charles
I
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
James and Anne Hyde in the
1660s, by Sir Peter
Lely
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
.jpg)
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
Main article: Monmouth
Rebellion
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
Main article: 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
Main article: Williamite 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
- 14 October 1633 – 27 January 1644: styled The Duke of York[154]
- 27 January 1644 – 6 February 1685: The Duke of York[154]
- 10 May 1659 – 6 February 1685: The Earl of Ulster[154]
- 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
- KG: Knight of the Garter, 20 April 1642[154]
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).
.svg)
Coat
of arms of James II of England
.svg)
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.
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