A Royal History of England: James II

Opinions about King James II were mixed in his lifetime and have remained divided ever since. One of his friends and supporters, Thomas Bruce, 2nd Earl of Ailesbury, wrote in his memoirs, “I do affirm that he was the most honest and sincere man I ever knew: a great and good Englishman, and a high protector of trade, and had nothing so much at heart as the glory and strength of the fleet and navy.” Yet the Victorian historian Henry Buckle in his History of Civilisation in England (1857) wrote, “It makes one’s flesh creep to think that such a man should have been the ruler of millions,” calling James II both “a disgrace” and “a slur on the age.” Others concur that he would have made an excellent King of France or Spain, but did not quite suit the England in which he lived.

Some historians consider him to have been a very weak man, and diarist Samuel Pepys wrote of him, “The Duke of York, in all things but his amours, is led by the nose of his wife.” But overall he appears to have been a man of considerable contrasts. If an ineffectual King, he was nevertheless a brave soldier. He was married twice and had many mistresses, yet was a religious zealot. He believed firmly in the Divine Right of Kings, but too easily gave up his crown.

James II was born at St. James’s Palace in London at midnight on 14th October 1633, the second surviving son of Charles I and Henrietta Maria, and the brother of Charles II. He was called Duke of York from birth, and in 1642 was made a Knight of the Garter. He later became Earl of Ulster and Duke of Normandy. Unusually, he was appointed Lord High Admiral at the age of three, which was an honorary title! He did, however, take on the role in a practical way as an adult.

He was educated by private tutors but, as he grew older, it was said that he was not hugely intelligent or witty, and lacked the charm of his brother Charles. He had a fair complexion as a youth and grew to be very tall, once described as being “two yards high”. Paintings show him regally dressed and with an elaborately curled periwig as an adult. Even if depicted wearing armour, he would still be swathed with sashes and cloaks.

James’s education was curtailed by the Civil War, which came to dominate his childhood. He was with his father at the Battle of Edgehill, and was almost killed when a cannonball missed him by inches. For his own safety James was sent to live in Oxford, which was a Royalist stronghold, but following a siege there in 1646 he was moved to St. James’s Palace.

Instead of being a home, however, his birthplace became a virtual prison. James managed to escape in 1648 with the help of an Irish colonel called Joseph Bampfield. He was eventually smuggled out of the country and taken to The Hague disguised as a young girl to avoid detection.

By the age of 19 he had begun to serve in the French army and became a Lieutenant-general. He was given his own Regiment of York, and experienced military combat in the War of Fronde, a French civil war, receiving praise for his apparent lack of fear. He later said that being part of the French army was the happiest of times for him.

Following the execution of Charles I in 1649, and with England under the control of Oliver Cromwell, James’s elder brother Charles attempted to claim the throne that was rightfully his. When Charles turned to Spain for help, the brothers were suddenly at odds. Spain was an enemy of France and James felt strongly that their loyalty should be to France. When it became known that Charles had allied himself with Spain, James was expelled from the French army.

With his younger brother, Henry, James travelled to Bruges, and eventually joined the Spanish army. In a twist of fate, he then found himself fighting unwillingly against French soldiers at the Battle of Dunes, soldiers who had once been his friends. In 1659 there was a truce between France and Spain, but by this time James had developed a closer bond with the Spanish and was even offered the post of admiral in their navy. But everything was to change for the Stuarts when his brother was restored to the throne as King Charles II in 1660.

James was now heir presumptive, although it seemed unlikely that he would ever inherit the throne. Charles was married and it was assumed that he would father heirs of his own to succeed. As it happened, Charles had numerous children with a variety of mistresses, but no legitimate heir.

In the year that the monarchy was restored James married Anne Hyde, who was the daughter of the King’s chief minister Edward Hyde. She and James had been little more than a dalliance in the previous year, but when she revealed that she was expecting a child, the couple agreed to marry. This did not go down well with King Charles or his court. As a commoner, Anne was not considered to be a suitable bride for a royal Duke.

James refused to acquiesce and married Anne secretly at Breda, Holland. Once the deed was done and there was no going back, James told his family of the ceremony. Consequently, James and Anne were given a second,

more public wedding, on 3rd September 1660 at Worcester House in The Strand. A son was born two months later, but died within weeks. A further five children also died in infancy, but two daughters survived: Mary, born 1662, and Anne, born 1665. Both were destined to become Queens of England.

On his brother’s accession, James was given the Scottish title Duke of Albany and was eventually made Lord High Commissioner for Scotland, with Holyrood House in Edinburgh as his official residence. The office of Lord High Admiral now became an official role and he commanded the navy during subsequent wars with the Dutch. A particular success was his defeat of a Dutch fleet off the coast of Lowestoft in June 1665. He was also appointed Governor of Portsmouth and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, and oversaw the refortification of the south coast of England.

In 1664 Charles II gave his brother territory in America between the Delaware and Connecticut rivers. The former Dutch territory — surrendered to England without a fight — was renamed in his honour. The port of New Amsterdam became known as New York after James’s title, Duke of York.

When London was hit by the Great Plague, James and Anne sought refuge in Salisbury and later Oxford in the summer of 1665 to avoid being infected. They returned to the capital once the plague had subsided, but London was soon hit by another disaster: the Great Fire of London. In September 1666 James was put in charge of bringing the fire under control.

In his private life, James remained devoted to Anne until her death in 1671, although he was regularly unfaithful. James kept various mistresses including Arabella Churchill (an ancestor of Winston), with whom he fathered four children. He made no secret of the liaison and the offspring were given the surname Fitzjames. Another mistress was Catherine Sedley, who he later created Countess of Dorchester. It became a family joke that James was attracted to plain women rather than great beauties, and Charles II teased his brother saying that the women were imposed upon him as a penance.

Catherine Sedley worked for an Italian princess, Mary of Modena, who the widowed James married in 1673, first by proxy at the Ducal Palace in Modena on 30th September and then in person on 21st November with a wedding ceremony in Dover, Kent. The fact that Mary, the new Duchess of York, was a Roman Catholic made her unpopular in England, and on her arrival Londoners burned an effigy of the Pope in protest. James fathered 12 children with Mary, most dying in infancy or early childhood as with his first wife, although two survived into adulthood.

Towards the end of Charles II’S reign, there was a republican plot to assassinate both the King and James, Duke of York, as his immediate heir because of their Roman Catholic leanings. It was known as the Rye House Plot, named after a house at Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, which the brothers were supposed to pass on their way home from the Newmarket races and outside which they were to be killed. It was their good fortune to leave the races early and the plot was foiled. When it became common knowledge, there was a huge wave of public support and affection for the King and the Duke. The Rye House Plot was instigated by the Earl of Essex, who committed suicide, and Charles II’S illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, who fled abroad for his own safety.

When Charles II died on 6th February 1685, James came to the throne as James II of England and Ireland, and also James VII of Scotland. He was privately crowned at Whitehall Palace with Catholic rites on 22nd April, and the following day, St. George’s Day, with full ceremony at Westminster Abbey, along with his wife, Mary, although they refused the Anglican sacrament.

It was a time of rejoicing for the people of England and there was no opposition from Parliament at the start of the reign. When Members assembled in May 1685, they became known as the “Loyal Parliament”. Nearly all officers kept their positions and the new King forgave those who had opposed him in the past and had wanted him removed from the line of succession, and so it was a smooth transition. Parliament also granted the King a very generous financial settlement with a Revenue Bill that assured him an income for life.

Although the reign had begun smoothly, it was not long before trouble started brewing and James faced rebellions in both England and Scotland. The most serious was led by his nephew the Duke of Monmouth, an illegitimate son of Charles II by his mistress Lucy Walters. Monmouth felt that, as Charles’s son, he should have been the next monarch. He firmly believed that, because he was a Protestant, the whole of England would support him. He landed at Lyme Regis on 11th June and was proclaimed King by his supporters at Taunton in Somerset. Monmouth stayed at the George Inn at Norton St. Philip, which became his headquarters while planning his rebellion. The inn still exists and is one of England’s oldest taverns, having first been granted a licence to sell alcohol in 1397.

On 6th July 1685 Monmouth’s army of some 4,000 men mounted a surprise night-time attack on James II’S royalist forces at Westonzoyland, a village near Bridgwater in Somerset. In what has become known as the Battle of Sedgemoor, Monmouth was easily defeated and around 1,300 of his supporters were killed and he was later found hiding in a ditch. He was captured and sentenced to death.

The Duke of Monmouth was executed at the Tower of London on 15th July. More than 300 of his followers were hanged, others were flogged or fined, and around 800 were deported and sold into slavery following the “Bloody Assizes” of Judge Jeffreys. It was not an auspicious start to James II’S reign. There were also rumours that the Queen and courtiers had made a shameless profit out of the sale of pardons and that the King had sanctioned acts of cruelty.

Across the border, there was also a small rebellion in Scotland when the Earl of Argyll sailed from Holland, where he had been hiding following a conviction for treason. Accompanied by 300 men, he tried to raise an army of the Campbell clan, but it came to nothing and Argyll was taken prisoner in Edinburgh on 18th June 1685 and was sentenced to death as a traitor.

As with so many of his predecessors, the matter of religion came to dominate much of James II’S reign. He was England’s last Roman Catholic monarch and some Protestant MPS fought against him as he tried to obtain acceptance for Catholics and non-conformists to worship, as his brother had done before him.

It was while living in France that James had been drawn to the Catholic faith and secretly converted to Catholicism in around 1668. He applied for a papal dispensation which would enable him to continue worshipping in the Church of England for the sake of appearances, but Pope Clement IX refused to grant it.

During the reign of Charles II, Parliament introduced the Test Act of 1673 which required anyone holding civil or military office to denounce Catholic practices and to receive the eucharist only in the Anglican church. James refused to accept this and relinquished his position as Lord High Admiral. In doing so, he effectively revealed his Catholic conversion and Parliament tried unsuccessfully to have him removed from the line of succession. Whilst remaining a Catholic, James agreed that his daughters, Mary and Anne, should be brought up as Protestants so that their place in the line was secure.

When, as King, he wanted to allow Roman Catholics to command regiments he faced opposition from his once loyal Parliament. The Tories were the dominant power and were staunchly Anglican. The Whigs tolerated nonconformists. Both parties were antiCatholic. Not to be undermined, James discontinued the Parliamentary session and it never sat again for the rest of his reign. He placed Catholics in high offices, including important positions at Oxford colleges, and in 1687 issued a Declaration of Indulgence, which effectively ended all laws that were unfavourable to Catholics.

The following year, at his instigation, it was proposed that a revised version of the Declaration should be read out in every Anglican church in England on two successive Sundays. Most vicars in England refused and, where they did, congregations walked out of church.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Sancroft, and six bishops, fiercely opposed the Declaration. They were arrested, imprisoned in the Tower of London, and put on trial for seditious libel, but were later acquitted.

On 10th June 1688 James became a father again when Queen Mary gave birth to a son, christened James Francis Edward and immediately titled Prince of Wales. As a male he superseded James’s Protestant daughters and became a Roman Catholic heir to the throne. To discredit this new Prince, James’s Protestant enemies invented the warming pan story, spreading rumours that the baby had been smuggled into the Queen’s bedchamber. As a result, there was always doubt that he was actually a son of James II and the Prince became known eventually as “The Old Pretender”.

On 22nd October 1688 James made a declaration to Parliament that the Prince of Wales was genuinely his son and heir, but it was rejected. The young Prince was barred from the line of succession by an Act of Settlement and subsequently had to forfeit all his British titles. Although royal births had witnesses at this time, none appeared to be impartial at Queen Mary’s confinement. James’s daughter Anne should have been present at the birth, but had been persuaded to visit Bath instead.

Within weeks the Bishop of London and a group of six prominent politicians invited the Dutch William of Orange, who was James’s nephew and son-inlaw, to come to England to “save the Protestant religion”.

William of Orange landed at Brixham, Devon, on 5th November 1688. A statue at the harbour now commemorates his arrival. An army of some 13,000 men followed and marched through Exeter and on to Bristol and Salisbury. It was the beginning of what is now called the Glorious Revolution, with James’s supporters becoming known as “Jacobites” after the Latin version of “James”.

The King was taken by surprise, expecting William to land in Kent rather than Devon. His army prepared to confront William’s men at Warminster, but the King was stricken with a serious nosebleed on 19th November and withdrew, eventually going back home to Whitehall Palace in London, where he discovered that even his daughter Anne had fled to Nottingham. The army and navy lost confidence in their monarch and soon the whole English navy became supporters of William.

James decided to run rather than fight for his position, first destroying as many government papers as he could lay his hands on. With the Queen and

the baby Prince of Wales escaping in advance to France, James set off to join them, leaving London in the early hours of 11th December. At Vauxhall he threw the Great Seal of the Realm into the River Thames, which symbolically marked the end of his reign. He had been on the throne just three years and many historians consider that he gave up the crown far too easily.

James was preparing to set sail from Sheerness when he was recognised, captured, and returned to London. William of Orange, placed in a difficult position with James being his fatherin-law, decided that the King should be set free. On 23rd December James crossed the English Channel, arriving at Ambleteuse, near Boulogne on Christmas Day. He went directly to his cousin, King Louis XIV of France, who gave him a home at St. Germain and a pension. Jacobite sympathizers in England began to drink a secret toast to “the King over the water” as a sign of their allegiance to him, holding their glasses over finger-bowls of water on the table. Fellow supporters instantly recognised the sign.

The news that James had thrown the Great Seal into the River Thames was taken by Parliament to mean that the King had voluntarily given up the crown. It was agreed that William of Orange would become King of England and rule jointly with his wife, James’s eldest daughter, Mary.

A Bill of Rights brought an official end to James II’S reign and included clauses that still affected the monarchy into this century: stating that no Roman Catholic could be King or Queen, and no one in the line of succession could marry a Catholic. In 1978 Prince Michael of Kent gave up his place in the line of succession to marry the Roman Catholic Marie Christine von Reibnitz. The Duke of Kent’s eldest son, the Earl of St. Andrews, also lost his place in 1988 on marrying the Catholic Sylvana Tomaselli. Following a new Succession to the Crown Act, which came into force in 2015, anyone marrying a Catholic is no longer disqualified. Consequently, the Earl of St. Andrews was reinstated and is now 35th in line, and Prince Michael currently 45th.

James II was formally deposed on 23rd December. After a short interregnum, he was succeeded in February 1689 by his Protestant son-in-law, and the reign of King William III and Queen Mary II began. On 11th April 1689, Scotland also decided that James had given up the crown and was no longer their King.

Although James appeared to cast off the mantle of sovereignty without a fight, he did make attempts to reclaim his crown. In March 1689 he sailed to Ireland, where an Act of Liberty and Conscience had been passed by the Irish Parliament, which granted religious freedom to all Catholics and Protestants.

Basing himself in Dublin, he formed an army and on 1st July 1690 attacked the forces of William of Orange 30 miles away on the River Boyne. William personally led his army, the last time two Kings of England faced each other in battle, and had a decisive victory at the Battle of the Boyne. It marked a turning point in the Protestant history of Ireland and is commemorated every July with a public holiday and a march of Orange Men through the streets of Northern Ireland.

James returned to France and never visited England again, although he did send an invasion fleet from Normandy in May 1692 in one final attempt to regain the throne, but lost in the resulting naval battles of Barfleur and La Hogue.

In 1697 Louis XIV signed the Treaty of Ryswick, which brought to an end a nine-year French conflict with England, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, and also stripped James of his independent army. In the treaty, Louis finally recognised William III as King of England and promised to give James no further military support.

Louis XIV continued to support James on a personal level as his cousin and gave him the magnificent Château de Saint-germain-en-laye, where he lived with his wife and some English Jacobite supporters, and which became his home for the rest of his life. In 1692 he became a father again with the birth of a daughter, Louise, whom he called “his solace”.

James died at the château on 16th September 1701 at the age of 68 after suffering a brain haemorrhage. Unusually, the former King was not buried but his coffin rested in the Chapel of St. Edmund at the Church of English Benedictines in Paris, guarded by monks. They believed that someone from England would make arrangements to transport the body to London to be buried amongst his royal predecessors in Westminster Abbey, but nobody did.

Rather gruesomely, his remains were eventually divided up by the monks, possibly in the belief that he would one day be canonised and the parts would become holy relics. James’s remains were rediscovered in 1824 and were reburied, along with those of his second wife, Mary of Modena. In 1855 Queen Victoria visited St. Germain and personally paid for a memorial to James in the church to mark his final resting place.