James II

1633-1701. King of England, Scotland and Ireland 1685-1688. Son of King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria. Brother of Charles II. Husband of Anne Hyde and Mary of Modena. Father of Mary and Anne. And James Francis Edward. He left England during the Glorious Revolution and was succeeded by his eldest daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange.

James grew up in exile, in France and the Netherlands, due to the Civil War and later the Commonwealth in England. He made a career in the French army. But in 1655, France became an ally of the English Republic. That is the reason why James and the whole royal family went to the part of the Netherlands which was then under Spanish rule. In 1658, James joined the Spanish army. On his brother’s wish, he fought together with the Spanish troops against the united English and French troops. He returned to England in 1660 after the restoration of the monarchy.

In religious terms, James II was strongly influenced by his Catholic mother. He was himself a devout Catholic since 1668. The fact that he was a Catholic became a serious problem during his reign because the English people were very suspicious of Catholics after the events of Mary I and the Gunpowder Plot. And the Popish Plot.

After his accession to the throne in 1685, James II strongly supported the English Catholics and gave them many important posts. According to Parliament, these pro-Catholic policies were against the Test Acts, a series of laws which were to guarantee the exclusion of Catholics from Court and Parliament. In 1687, James II proclaimed the Declaration of Indulgence, which suspended the Test Acts and some other anti-Catholic laws. Thus, he was accused of suspending laws without the consent of Parliament. But it was his second pro-Catholic Declaration of Indulgence (April 1688), which led to really serious trouble. This declaration was supposed to be read out in the Anglican churches, and the Protestant English elite was strongly opposed to this.

The birth of James's son James Francis Edward (his male heir and baptised Catholic) in June 1688 contributed to the fear of the Protestant English elite to be run over by a Catholic dynasty. They sent a petition to William of Orange, the husband of James’s eldest and Protestant daughter Mary, and invited him to come to England and to ascend the English throne. Dutch troops landed in England on 5 November 1688. James II fled to France, and later he went to Ireland. This is the so-called Glorious Revolution.

In the mainly Catholic Ireland, James made a last attempt to regain the throne. He formed a troop against William of Orange. But after a series of defeats, most famously at the Siege of Derry and at the Battle of the Boyne (1690), he finally left for the continent.

James lived in French exile until his death in 1701. He spent most of his time meditating and praying, and made no further attempts to regain the English throne. His claim to the English and Scottish throne was supported by Jacobites.

Sources:

Eßer, Raingard. Die Tudors und die Stuarts. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2004.

Kluxen, Kurt. Geschichte Englands. Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart. Stuttgart: Kröner, 1985.

Maurer, Michael. Kleine Geschichte Englands. Stuttgart: Reclam, 2007.