King James II and VII — The Man Who Started It All
James Francis Edward Stuart — later James II of England and James VII of Scotland — was not born to be a controversialist. He was the second surviving son of Charles I, shaped by the disasters of the Civil War and the long years of exile during the Interregnum. He was a brave and capable soldier, a competent naval commander, and a man of genuine personal courage. But his Catholic faith, combined with his belief in the absolute prerogatives of the crown, made his reign a permanent crisis.
Early Life and the Civil War
James was born on 14 October 1633 at St James's Palace, London. He was twelve years old when the Civil War began to go badly for his father. He was captured by Parliamentary forces during the war but escaped in 1648 (disguised as a girl, in one account) and joined his mother and brother in exile. He served in the French army under Marshal Turenne and later in the Spanish army, developing real military skill and the beginning of a lifelong interest in naval warfare.
When his brother Charles II was restored in 1660, James became Duke of York and Lord High Admiral — the most senior naval post in the kingdom. He was genuinely effective in this role. He commanded at the Battle of Lowestoft (1665) in the Second Anglo-Dutch War, a significant English victory. His administrative abilities helped to rebuild the English navy.
The Catholic Question
James had been raised Anglican but converted to Catholicism in the early 1670s — probably around 1668–1669, though he kept his conversion largely private at first. His first wife, Anne Hyde (mother of the future Queens Mary II and Anne), had also converted before her death in 1671. In 1673, James married Mary of Modena, an Italian Catholic princess, confirming his religious commitment.
The Test Act of 1673 required all public office-holders to take communion according to the Church of England. James resigned his position as Lord High Admiral rather than comply. This effectively announced his Catholicism to the world.
The political implications were severe. England had been Protestant since the reign of Edward VI (with the brief exception of Mary I), and the Church of England was the established church. Catholics were subject to penal laws, barred from public office, and viewed with suspicion as potential agents of foreign (papal or French) power. The idea of a Catholic king was, to a large part of the English political nation, genuinely alarming.
The Exclusion Crisis
The Exclusion Crisis of 1679–1681 was the first constitutional battle over James's succession. The Whig faction in Parliament, led by the Earl of Shaftesbury, introduced three Exclusion Bills designed to remove James from the line of succession. Charles II dissolved Parliament rather than allow exclusion to proceed, and the crisis eventually subsided — but the political fault lines it revealed would eventually bring James's reign to a premature end.
The Reign: 1685–1688
James succeeded to the throne on the death of Charles II on 6 February 1685. His accession was initially peaceful — the Protestant Duke of Monmouth (Charles II's illegitimate son) attempted a rebellion in England in 1685, and the Ninth Earl of Argyll rose in Scotland, but both were rapidly suppressed. James was briefly more secure than his enemies had expected.
He used his early political strength to push towards his religious objectives. He issued the Declaration of Indulgence (1687, 1688), suspending the penal laws against Catholics and Dissenters by royal prerogative — bypassing Parliament. He used the royal prerogative to appoint Catholics to military and civil positions despite the Test Acts. He packed the judiciary with men more sympathetic to his views.
The confrontation with the Church of England came to a head in 1688 when James ordered Anglican clergy to read his Declaration of Indulgence in church. Seven bishops refused and petitioned against the order. James had them tried for seditious libel. The acquittal of the seven bishops in June 1688 — greeted with public celebration — was a humiliating defeat.
The Birth of the Prince of Wales
On 10 June 1688, just before the bishops' trial, Mary of Modena gave birth to a son — James Francis Edward Stuart. This was the decisive event that precipitated the Revolution. Before the birth, it had been possible to wait out James's reign: his Protestant daughters Mary and Anne were his heirs, and the throne would eventually pass to a Protestant. The birth of a healthy male heir — who would, like his father, be raised Catholic — changed everything.
Almost immediately, Protestant propagandists circulated the claim that the baby was not real — that a live child had been smuggled into the royal bed in a warming pan to provide a Catholic heir. There is no credible evidence for this claim; contemporary medical examination found nothing suspicious. But the 'warming-pan baby' story was widely believed and helped to delegitimise James's dynasty.
The Glorious Revolution
Within weeks of the bishops' acquittal, the seven 'Immortal' Protestant magnates had sent their famous invitation to William of Orange. William landed at Brixham in Devon on 5 November 1688 with an army of approximately 14,000 men. James's support rapidly evaporated: his commanders defected, his army declined to fight, and his younger daughter Anne deserted to William's cause. Even John Churchill — the future Duke of Marlborough, one of James's most trusted commanders — went over to William.
James attempted to negotiate but was overtaken by events. He sent his wife and infant son to France. On 23 December 1688, he fled London. He was briefly caught by fishermen at Faversham in Kent but allowed to go free. He eventually crossed to France on 23 December 1688. In January 1689, William summoned a Convention Parliament, which declared that James had abdicated by his flight and offered the throne jointly to William and Mary.
The Court at Saint-Germain-en-Laye
Louis XIV of France received James with full royal honours at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a magnificent royal palace west of Paris. Louis assigned James an income and the full use of the palace for himself and his court. This arrangement served French interests — a Jacobite court maintained the option of destabilising Britain.
The court at Saint-Germain became a centre of exile politics, intrigue, and hope. Hundreds of Jacobites — English, Scottish, and Irish — gathered there. James maintained the full forms of royal ceremony: levées, audiences, the trappings of kingship. He was known as the 'King over the Water' — a phrase used by those who drank secret toasts to his health by passing their wine glasses over a bowl of water before drinking.
James made two active attempts to recover his throne. In 1689 he went to Ireland, where Catholic Irish supporters and French troops gave him a substantial force. After the defeat at the Boyne in July 1690 — when William III defeated the Jacobite-Irish army in a battle on the River Boyne in County Meath — James fled back to France. His enemies in Ireland named him 'Séamus an Chaca' (James the Shit), a nickname that stuck, reflecting fury at his rapid departure after the defeat.
His final years at Saint-Germain were marked by increasing piety, declining health, and the gradual erosion of hope. Louis XIV's support was a political convenience rather than a sincere commitment to Jacobite restoration. James devoted increasing time to religious exercises and accepted his situation with a resignation that bordered on fatalism.
Death and Legacy
James II died on 16 September 1701 at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, from a brain haemorrhage following a period of declining health. He was 67 years old. He was buried at the church of Saint-Germain with great ceremony. Louis XIV, in the hours after James's death, recognised his son James Francis Edward Stuart as King James III of England and VIII of Scotland — a gesture that contributed to the deteriorating international relations that produced the War of Spanish Succession.
James's legacy is deeply contested. He was the last Catholic king to reign in Britain, and the last king to attempt to govern without consistent parliamentary cooperation. His deposition established the principle of parliamentary sovereignty that shaped British constitutional development for the following three centuries. To Jacobites, he was a legitimate king unjustly driven from his throne by Dutch invasion and Protestant bigotry. To Whigs and later Liberals, he was a tyrant whose removal preserved British liberties.
The Jacobite cause he inadvertently created persisted for nearly sixty years after his death, sustained by the loyalty of those who believed that the legitimate line of succession had been interrupted and must eventually be restored.