James II (England) (1733–1701; Ruled 1685–1688)

JAMES II (ENGLAND) (1733–1701; ruled 1685–1688)

JAMES II (ENGLAND) (1733–1701; ruled 1685–1688), king of England, Scotland, and Ireland. James II was born on 14 October 1633, the second son of Charles I (ruled 1625–1649), and was created duke of York and Albany in January 1634. Following his father's defeat in the civil war, James spent 1648–1660 in exile on the Continent, where he fought in the service of the French and Spanish crowns, earning a reputation for bravery. Returning to England in 1660 with the Restoration of the monarchy under his brother, Charles II (ruled 1660–1685), he became lord high admiral and oversaw a period of expansion for the navy. He converted to Catholicism sometime in the late 1660s and was forced to resign all of his offices in 1673 following his noncompliance with the Test Act of that year. In 1679–1681 the parliamentary Whigs launched an attempt to exclude him from the succession on the grounds of his religion (he was next in line to the throne due to his brother's failure to father any legitimate children). Exiled to Scotland by his brother while the exclusion crisis unfolded, James had two successful stints as head of the government there, where he showed himself a firm friend of the Episcopalian interest against the Presbyterian menace.

Recalled to England in 1682, James enjoyed a surge of popularity during the Tory reaction that followed the defeat of the exclusion movement. His accession in February 1685 was greeted with numerous loyal addresses and widespread rejoicing across England, Scotland, and Ireland. A few diehard radicals rose with Archibald Campbell (1629–1685), earl of Argyll (in Scotland), and James Scott (1649–1685), duke of Monmouth, Charles II's eldest illegitimate son (in England), that summer, but both rebellions failed miserably for lack of support.

James made a public commitment at the beginning of his reign to rule by law and protect the Protestant establishment, but he soon proved that his word could not be relied upon. He began issuing Catholics dispensations from the Test Act so they could hold commissions in the army, prompting the ire of his newly elected Parliament (an overwhelmingly Tory-Anglican body), which he dismissed in November 1685. He achieved a judicial ruling in favor of the dispensing power in the feigned action of Godden v. Hales in June 1686 (though only after removing six of the twelve judges), which allowed him to bring Catholics into his privy council. He encouraged Catholics to celebrate Mass openly, promoted Catholic schools, and used the press to try to convince people of the merits of converting, though his missionary efforts met with limited success. When the Anglican clergy refused to heed his demand that they refrain from anti-Catholic sermonizing, James set up an Ecclesiastical Commission to discipline recalcitrant clergymen. Realizing that the Tory-Anglican interest would not assist him in his efforts to help his coreligionists, he tried to forge an alliance with the Protestant Nonconformists, hiring former Whig publicists, such as Henry Care and the Quaker William Penn, to promote the cause of religious toleration in the press. In April 1687 he issued his first Declaration of Indulgence, suspending all the penal laws against Nonconformists by dint of his royal prerogative, and embarked upon a campaign to secure the return of a packed Parliament so he could turn this toleration into law.

James also built up a sizable standing army, increasing the less than nine thousand troops he inherited from his brother to twenty thousand by the end of 1685 and adding a further fourteen to fifteen thousand over the course of 1688. On the foreign policy front, he tried to adopt a middle position between the French and Dutch interests, though his failure to take a stance against the aggressions of Louis XIV (ruled 1643–1715) toward the Protestant interest on the Continent led to widespread suspicions that he was in cahoots with the French king.

James made a serious miscalculation in trying to force the clergy to read his second Declaration of Indulgence of April 1688. Seven bishops petitioned against the royal suspending power, and though charged with sedition by the crown, were found not guilty by a King's Bench jury. When James's second wife, Mary of Modena (1658–1718), gave birth to the Prince of Wales on 10 June 1688, raising the prospect of a never-ending succession of Catholic kings, a group of seven Whig and Tory politicians invited William of Orange (William III, ruled 1689–1702) to come from Holland to rescue English liberties and the Protestant religion. William landed at Torbay on 5 November, meeting little resistance. James fled the country for France in December 1688, after first throwing the great seal into the River Thames, thereby effectively abdicating the government (although his first attempt at leaving the country was foiled by fishermen in Kent, and it took a second attempt later that month before he made it to the Continent).

James's pursuit of similar pro-Catholic policies in Scotland and Ireland alienated Protestant opinion in his other two kingdoms, though Jacobite sentiment remained strong in Ireland, where 80 percent of the population was Catholic. Hence James went to Ireland in March 1689 to launch a bid to reclaim his British thrones, but he was defeated by William at the battle of the Boyne (1 July 1690) and withdrew again to France. He died at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, outside Paris, on 6 September 1701.

See also Charles II (England) ; Glorious Revolution (Britain) ; Jacobitism ; William and Mary .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Source

Beddard, Robert, ed. A Kingdom without a King: The Journal of the Provisional Government in the Revolution of 1688. Oxford, 1988.

Secondary Sources

Childs, John. The Army, James II, and the Glorious Revolution. Manchester, U.K., 1980.

Miller, John. James II: A Study in Kingship. London and New Haven, 2000.

Pincus, Steven. "'To Protect English Liberties': The English Nationalist Revolution of 1688–1689." In Protestantism and National Identity: Britain and Ireland, c. 1650–c. 1850, edited by Tony Claydon and Ian McBride, pp. 75–104. Cambridge, U.K., 1998.

Speck, W. A. James II. Harlow, U.K., 2002.

——. Reluctant Revolutionaries: Englishmen and the Revolution of 1688. Oxford, 1988.

Turner, Francis Charles. James II. London, 1948.

Western, J. R. Monarchy and Revolution: The English State in the 1680s. Basingstoke, U.K., 1985.

Tim Harris