James II (1430–60), king of Scots (1437–60). James II is the first Scottish king of whose appearance we can be fairly certain. An Austrian visitor to the Scottish court in 1458, Jörg von Ehingen, had a portrait made of the king, presumably for the edification of James's sister Eleanor of Austria. King James is portrayed as a confident young man, his hands on a dagger at his belt, with the whole of the left side of his face from forehead to chin disfigured by a livid vermilion birthmark described by the French poet François Villon and the contemporary Scottish ‘Auchinleck chronicler’. The confidence and ruthlessness suggested by this face are an accurate reflection of the king's character and policies. In a short life—he died at 29—and extremely short period of personal rule, he followed the path taken by his father, broke the power of the greatest magnate house, the Black Douglases, secured a sizeable increase in royal power at home and a formidable reputation abroad.

James was the younger of twin sons born to James I and Joan Beaufort at Holyrood in October 1430. (The elder twin, Alexander, died in infancy.) His father's assassination at Perth in 1437 thrust James into the kingship aged only 6 and necessitated a long minority (1437–49), in the first part of which he was controlled by the rump of his father's supporters, headed by the queen. He was crowned (March 1437) by Michael Ochiltree, bishop of Dunblane, a close associate of James I but hardly the premier ecclesiastic in Scotland. The disappearance of many major noble families, either through forfeiture and execution or failure of heirs in the male line, meant that by 1437 there were very few earls left in Scotland; and the political imbalance which resulted from this caused an enormous concentration of power in the hands of the Black Douglas family, with its head, the young William, 8th earl of Douglas, becoming lieutenant-general for James II (probably in 1444) and—together with the Livingston of Callander—using the office to acquire earldoms and other honours for his brothers and allies.

In July 1449 James II married Mary of Gueldres, only daughter of Duke Arnold of Gueldres and niece of Philip the Good of Burgundy (who paid his niece's dowry in instalments). Four of James's sisters had already made prestigious European marriages— Margaret to the Dauphin Louis in 1436, Isabella to Francis of Brittany in 1442, Mary to the Lord of Veere in 1444, and Eleanor to Sigismund of Austria in 1449. Thus the Scottish king threw off the frustration of being under tutelage with confidence and ruthlessness. He arrested and forfeited the Livingstons in 1449–50, driving the young earl of Ross (who was James Livingston's son-in-law) into rebellion in 1451.

However, James II's real target was the Black Douglases. Various motives have been suggested for his attack on the family—royal financial difficulties, linked to the king's determination, from 1451, to secure the Douglas earldom of Wigtown; James II's perception of Douglas weakness in Galloway as a result of the ‘Black Dinner’ of 1440; the bond (probably of friendship) between Douglas, Crawford, and the rebel Ross of 1451–2, bringing together former rivals in a potentially dangerous combination; or simply the issue of authority, with Douglas's predominance at court (in spite of his having relinquished the lieutenant-generalship by 1450) unacceptable to an adult Stewart king. The outcome was an attack on Douglas estates by James II, a policy apparently urged by Chancellor Crichton, Admiral Crichton, and Bishop Turnbull of Glasgow during Earl William's absence in Rome in Jubilee Year 1450. There followed a temporary reconciliation (indicating royal weakness), and the great crime of the reign, James's murder of Douglas at Stirling castle on 22 February 1452, following a two-day conference which Douglas attended under a royal safe conduct.

Civil war followed, with the 9th earl of Douglas pitted against a determined James II. The king was lucky to escape from Stirling with his life when the Douglases arrived to confront him a month after the murder. Thereafter the situation improved. A male heir was born to Mary of Gueldres at St Andrews (May 1452); a royalist Parliament justified the Douglas murder; and the king walked the political tightrope of satisfying his own supporters and negotiating with the Douglases until he was strong enough to deliver the killer punch. Events in England—the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses—assisted James by depriving the Douglases of the possibility of armed support. In 1455 the king's sieges of Abercorn and Threave, and a skirmish at Arkinholm on the river Esk, completed the ruin of the Black Douglases.

James II's five remaining years reveal no let-up in the king's energy and aggressiveness—organizing an abortive attack on the Isle of Man; leading border raids; playing off Lancaster against York; restocking the Scottish peerage with earls, including royal Stewarts; adopting an astonishingly high-handed attitude towards the Danes in his demand for a marriage alliance for his son ceding Orkney and Shetland to Scotland; and receiving from Philip of Burgundy the gift of the huge cannon ‘Mons Meg’ in 1457. James II died as he had lived, the eternal warrior, mortally wounded by the explosion of one of his own guns at the siege of Roxburgh castle in August 1460.

Norman Macdougall

Bibliography

Donaldson, G. , Scottish Kings (1967);
Grant, A. , Independence and Nationhood: Scotland 1306–1469 (1984);
McGladdery, C. , James II (Edinburgh, 1990);
Nicholson, R. , Scotland: The Later Middle Ages (Edinburgh, 1974).

James II

James II (1633-1701) was king of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1685 to 1688. Britain's last Stuart and last Catholic monarch, he granted religious minorities the right to worship. He was deposed by the Glorious Revolution.

Since the Declaration of Rights of 1689 charged him with attempting to "subvert and extirpate the Protestant religion and the laws and liberties of the kingdom," James II has traditionally been treated as a would-be tyrant by older historians. Recent writers have pointed out that his failures were more personal than political. In 1679, in lofty concept of his office, James stated that "the monarchy, … I thank God, yet has had no dependency on parliaments nor on nothing but God alone." And within the strict letter of the constitution, James was not wrong. James's Catholicism, to which he was converted about 1670, is viewed as a major impediment, for in its cause he committed most of his excesses.

Born in October 1633, the second son of Charles I, James was created Duke of York at baptism. He mastered the rudiments of soldiering and seamanship. He emulated his older brother, Charles II, to the point of matching him in number of mistresses. However, he turned increasingly to religion in his later years.

After his father's execution in 1649, James wandered into foreign military service during the Commonwealth period (1649-1660). With the restoration of the Stuarts, he served his brother as lord high admiral, administered colonies in Africa and New York, and fought at sea in two wars against Holland, in 1665 and 1672.

After his conversion to Catholicism, James's religion, his pro-French policies, and his antiparliamentarian sentiments attracted the hostilities of the emerging Whig party. The Test Act (1673), which deprived Catholics of government office, was aimed largely at James. Though he resigned from the Admiralty, the Whigs hounded him between 1679 and 1681 with the Exclusion Bill, designed to remove him totally from the succession to the throne. Charles crushed this opposition and reinstated James in the Admiralty and the Council in 1682.

In February 1685 James became king upon his brother's death and began a troubled reign of nearly 4 years. The Monmouth Rebellion (1685), led by his illegitimate nephew, was put down so severely by Judge Jeffreys that James's popularity was impaired. He attempted to master opposition by controlling local elections, expelling Protestant university officials and replacing them with Catholics, reviving the Anglican Church's High Commission, which removed the critical bishop of London, and maintaining a standing army outside London. While granting toleration to Catholics and to Protestant Dissenters, he did so by decree and not by parliamentary statute. When the archbishop of Canterbury refused to promulgate the decree, he and six bishops were arrested in June 1688. The occasion caused even passive observers to resent James's autocracy, and when a few ardent opponents summoned William of Orange, James's son-in-law, to save England's "religion, liberties and properties" by invasion, most of the nation willingly allowed the so-called Glorious Revolution to run its course. James fled England in December 1688, never to return.

Louis XIV gave asylum to James. Until July 1690 French military and naval units aided the efforts of James's English supporters, the Jacobites (from the Latin Jacobus, James), in Ireland, but at the battle of the Boyne River (July 1, 1690) James was defeated. Upon his return to France, James withdrew from active leadership of his own cause, demoralized still further by Louis's recognition of William and Mary's legitimate rule in the Treaty of Ryswick (1697). He died in September 1701.

Two marriages, to Anne Hyde (1660) and to Mary of Modena (1673), produced 15 children; two of James's daughters later became queens of England, and a son became the "Old Pretender" of the Jacobite cause.

Further Reading

The only reliable biography of James is Francis C. Turner, James II (1948). The best study of his reign is David Ogg, England in the Reigns of James II and William III (1955).

Additional Sources

Ashley, Maurice, James II, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977.

Miller, John, James II: a study in kingship, Hove: Wayland, 1978.

Trevor, Meriol, The shadow of a crown: the life story of James II of England and VII of Scotland, London: Constable, 1988. □

James II (1430–60), king of Scots (1437–60). James II is the first Scottish king of whose appearance we can be fairly certain. He is portrayed as a confident young man, his hands on a dagger at his belt, with the whole of the left side of his face disfigured by a livid vermilion birthmark. In a short life—he died at 29—he followed the path taken by his father, broke the power of the greatest magnate house, the Black Douglases, secured a sizeable increase in royal power at home and a formidable reputation abroad.

James was the younger of twin sons born to James I and Joan Beaufort at Holyrood in October 1430. (The elder twin, Alexander, died in infancy.) His father's assassination at Perth in 1437 thrust James into the kingship aged only 6 and necessitated a long minority (1437–49). The disappearance of many major noble families, and the political imbalance which resulted from this caused an enormous concentration of power in the hands of the Black Douglas family, with its head, the young William, 8th earl of Douglas, becoming lieutenant‐general for James II (probably in 1444).

In July 1449 James II married Mary of Gueldres, only daughter of Duke Arnold of Gueldres and niece of Philip the Good of Burgundy. The Scottish king threw off the frustration of being under tutelage with confidence and ruthlessness. James II's target was the Black Douglases. The outcome was an attack on Douglas estates followed by the great crime of the reign, James's murder of Douglas at Stirling castle on 22 February 1452, after a two‐day conference which Douglas attended under a royal safe conduct.

Civil war followed, with the 9th earl of Douglas pitted against a determined James II. The king was lucky to escape from Stirling with his life when the Douglases arrived to confront him a month after the murder. Thereafter the situation improved. A male heir was born to Mary of Gueldres at St Andrews May 1452); a royalist Parliament justified the Douglas murder; and the king walked the political tightrope of satisfying his own supporters and negotiating with the Douglases until he was strong enough to deliver the killer punch. In 1455 the king's sieges of Abercorn and Threave, and a skirmish at Arkinholm on the river Esk, completed the ruin of the Black Douglases.

James II's five remaining years reveal no let‐up in the king's energy and aggressiveness. He died as he had lived, the eternal warrior, mortally wounded by the explosion of one of his own guns at the siege of Roxburgh castle in August 1460.

James II 1430–60, king of Scotland (1437–60), son and successor of James I. During his minority successive earls of Douglas vied for power with factions led by Sir William Crichton and Sir Alexander Livingstone. The power of the Douglases was temporarily broken (1440) by the judicial murder of William Douglas , the 6th earl, but the king later allied himself with William Douglas, the 8th earl, to overthrow Crichton and Livingstone. By 1450, James ruled in his own right. When in 1452 the king discovered Douglas in a conspiracy, James called him to Stirling, charged him with betrayal, and stabbed him. After the resulting rebellion, the king attainted James Douglas , the 9th earl, and seized the Douglas lands. During his reign James improved the justice courts and regulated the coinage. A Lancastrian partisan in the Wars of the Roses , he invaded England and was accidentally killed at the siege of Roxburgh. His son James III succeeded him.

James II (1633–1701) King of England and Scotland (1685–88), the second son of CHARLES I. As Duke of York he was Lord High Admiral in the second and third Anglo-Dutch Wars, during which the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam was captured and renamed New York in his honour (1664). He became a Roman Catholic and married Mary of Modena, also a Roman Catholic, in 1673, resigning as admiral in that year under the TEST ACT; attempts were made to exclude him from the succession during the years 1679–81, but on the death of CHARLES II he ascended the throne without opposition. MONMOUTH'S REBELLION came early in his reign, and the BLOODY ASSIZES that punished it were resented. Within three years of his accession he had provoked the widespread opposition that culminated in the GLORIOUS REVOLUTION, which replaced him on the throne by William and Mary. He died in exile in France.

James II (1633–1701), King of England and VII of Scotland, 1685–8. The second son of Charles I, c.1670 he became a RC. Subsequent attempts to exclude him from the succession were defeated. At the beginning of his reign he supported the C of E, but soon he claimed power to dispense from the Test Act and appointed RCs to high office, and in 1687 and 1688 he issued Declarations of Indulgence. The refusal of W. Sancroft and six other bishops to publish the second of these Declarations from the pulpit led to the Trial of the Seven Bishops. James's promise once again to uphold the rights of the C of E did not stop William, Prince of Orange, and the Whigs from deposing him, and he fled to France. He later tried to recover Ireland but was defeated in 1690.

James II c.1260–1327, king of Aragón and count of Barcelona (1291–1327), king of Sicily (1285–95). He succeeded his father, Peter III, in Sicily and his brother, Alfonso III, in Aragón. James defended Sicily against the claims of Charles II of Naples until 1295, when he relinquished the island in exchange for the title to Sardinia and Corsica. (Sardinia was annexed in 1323–24, but he did not take Corsica.) James later supported Charles against the former's own brother, who had been proclaimed king of Sicily as Frederick II . James was succeeded in Aragón by his son Alfonso IV.

James II 1315–49, king of Majorca (1324–49), count of Roussillon and Cerdagne, lord of Montpellier; grandson of James I, nephew and successor of Sancho IV. In 1329 he declared himself a vassal of the Aragonese crown. Accusing James of illegal acts, Peter IV of Aragón invaded and conquered Majorca (1343) and Roussillon (1344) and annexed them to Aragón. James tried to recover his kingdom, but was defeated and killed in battle on Majorca. His son, James III, tried unsuccessfully to recover the kingdom in 1375.

James II (1430–60) King of Scotland (1437–60), son and successor of JAMES I. During his minority successive earls of Douglas vied for power, and when he began to reign in his own right the Douglases remained a threat to his authority. He improved the courts of justice and regulated the coinage. He was killed by an accidental cannon blast while leading a siege against Roxburgh Castle, held by the English.

James II (1430–60) King of Scotland (1437–60), son and successor of James I. His minority was dominated by aristocratic factions, particularly the Douglases. In 1452, he killed the Earl of Douglas and seized control. During the Wars of the Roses, James supported the Lancastrians against the Yorkists, and was killed by an exploding cannon at Roxburgh.