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James II,
also called (1634-85) DUKE OF YORK
(b. Oct. 14, 1633, London, Eng.--d. Sept. 5/6 [Sept. 16/17, New Style],
1701, Saint-Germain, France), king of Great Britain from 1685 to 1688, and
the last Stuart monarch in the direct male line. He was deposed in the Glorious
Revolution of 1688 and replaced by William III and Mary II. That
revolution, engendered by James's Roman Catholicism, permanently established
Parliament as the ruling power of England.
James II was the second surviving
son of Charles I and Henrietta Maria. He was created Duke of York in January
1634. During the English Civil Wars he lived at Oxford--from October 1642
until the city surrendered in June 1646. He was then removed by order of
Parliament to St. James's Palace, from which he escaped to the Netherlands
in April 1648. He rejoined his mother in France in early 1649. Joining the
French army in April 1652, he served in four campaigns under the great
French general Viscount de Turenne, who
commended his courage and ability. When his brother, Charles
II, concluded an alliance with Spain against France in 1656 he
reluctantly changed sides, and he commanded the right wing of the Spanish
army at the Battle of the Dunes in June
1658.
At the restoration of his brother
Charles II to the English throne in 1660, James became lord high admiral and
did much to maintain the efficiency and improve the organization of the
navy. He also showed considerable interest in colonial ventures; it was on
his initiative that New Amsterdam was seized from the Dutch in 1664 and
renamed New York in his honour. He commanded the fleet in the opening
campaigns of the Second and Third Dutch wars.
This was to be his last taste of active military command until 1688. In
politics he was a strong supporter of the Earl of
Clarendon, whose daughter Anne he married in September 1660. Both
before and after marriage he had the reputation of being as great a
libertine as his brother. But in 1668 or 1669 he was admitted to the Roman
Catholic church, though, on his brother's insistence, he continued to
take the Anglican sacraments until 1672, and he attended Anglican services
until 1676. Charles II also insisted that James's daughters, Mary and Anne,
be raised in the Protestant faith. (see also New
York City, Anglican Communion)
James's conversion had little effect
on his political views, which were already formed by his reverence for his
dead father and his close association with the High Church party. James, in
fact, was always more favourable to the Anglican church than was his
Protestant brother. He welcomed the prospect of England's reentering the
European war on the side of the Dutch; and he consented to the marriage of
his elder daughter, Mary, to the Protestant William of Orange in 1677. For
most of his life James was the spokesman of the conservative Anglican
courtiers, who believed that his views on monarchy and Parliament coincided
with theirs, who found his formal and humourless nature more congenial than
Charles's slippery geniality, and who respected his frank acknowledgment of
his religious beliefs. (see also Anglo-Catholicism)
In view of the queen's
childlessness, however, the conversion of the heir presumptive to the throne
roused great alarm in the general public. James resigned all of his offices
in 1673 rather than take an anti-Catholic oath imposed by the so-called Test
Act and thus made his position known publicly. Later that year, his
first wife having died, he gave further offense by marrying a Roman Catholic
princess, Mary of Modena. By 1678 James's
Roman Catholicism had created a climate of hysteria in which the fabricated
tale of a "Popish Plot" to
assassinate Charles and put his brother on the throne was generally
believed. From 1679 to 1681 three successive Parliaments strove to exclude
James from the succession by statute. During this crisis James spent long
periods in exile at Brussels and Edinburgh. But owing largely to his own
tenacious defense of his rights, the exclusionists were defeated. In 1682 he
returned to England and resumed the leadership of the Anglican Tories, whose
power in local government was reestablished and increased by the
"remodeling" of the borough corporations and the government of the
counties in their favour. By 1684 James's influence on state policy was
paramount, and when he finally came to the throne on Feb. 6, 1685, with very
little overt opposition or even criticism, it seemed likely that the strong
support of the Anglicans would make him one of the most powerful of the
17th-century British kings. (see also Tory
Party)
The new royalist Parliament that
assembled in May 1685 voted James a large income, and there seemed to be no
reason why he should not in time secure adequate toleration for his
coreligionists. But unsuccessful rebellions led by the Duke of Monmouth in
England and the Duke of Argyll in Scotland, in the summer of 1685, marked a
turning point in his attitude. James's distrust of his subjects, conceived
in the turbulent 1670s, was at once sharpened. The rebellions were put down
with great ferocity, the army was considerably increased, and the new
regiments were granted to Roman Catholic officers who had had military
experience abroad and whose loyalty was undoubted. This last act of policy
provoked a quarrel between king and Parliament, which was prorogued in
November 1685, never to meet again. In 1686 the division between the king
and his former allies, the Anglican Tories, deepened. After a number of them
had been replaced, the judges of King's Bench in the collusive action Godden
v. Hales found in favour of
the king's power to excuse individuals from the Test Oath; Roman Catholics
were admitted to the Privy Council and subsequently to the high offices of
state. A commission for ecclesiastical causes was established to administer
James's powers as supreme governor of the Anglican church, and its first act
was to suspend Henry Compton, bishop of
London, one of the most outspoken critics of royal policy. (see also Bloody Assizes)
In 1687 James intensified his Roman
Catholic policy and dismissed his Anglican brothers-in-law the Earl of
Clarendon and the Earl of Rochester. Magdalen College, Oxford, was given
over for the use of Roman Catholics, and a papal nuncio was officially
accredited to St. James's Palace. In April James issued the so-called Declaration of Indulgence suspending the laws against Roman
Catholics and Protestant dissenters alike; in July he dissolved Parliament,
and in September he launched an intensive campaign to win over the
Protestant dissenters and with their aid secure a new Parliament more
amenable to his wishes.
What those wishes were is still not
clear: some of his utterances suggest a genuine belief in religious
toleration as a matter of principle; others point to the
establishment of Roman Catholicism as the dominant if not the exclusive
religion of the state. This confusion may well reflect the state of James's
own mind, which undoubtedly deteriorated in the years 1687-88, and some of
his assertions, accusations, and threats at this time verge on the insane.
The unexpected news that the queen
was pregnant (November 1687), establishing the prospect of a Roman Catholic
succession, had great effect on most Protestants; while a wholesale
"remodeling" of borough corporations, lord lieutenancies, deputy
lieutenancies, and magistracies that winter inflamed the majority of the
nobility and gentry, whose political and social power suffered by it. Ever
since the spring of 1687 many English leaders had been in touch with William
of Orange, the husband of the heiress presumptive Mary and the
champion of Protestant Europe against Louis XIV of France. The spark was
touched off by James himself, when he reissued his Declaration of Indulgence
on April 27, 1688, and on May 4 ordered it to be read in the churches. The
Archbishop of Canterbury and six of his bishops petitioned James to withdraw
the order. Their petition was subsequently published, and James made the
mistake of prosecuting its authors for seditious libel. Meanwhile, on June
10, in slightly mysterious circumstances, the queen gave birth to a son.
On June 30 the seven bishops were
acquitted--a tremendous defeat for the government--and that same day seven
leading Englishmen sent a letter inviting William of Orange to lead an army
to England and call a free Parliament to arbitrate on the legitimacy of the
Prince of Wales. By September William's intentions were obvious, but James
declined Louis XIV's offer of assistance for fear of the reaction in
England; in any case he was confident in the ability of his forces to repel
invasion. William sailed under cover of the general war that had by then
broken out in Europe, evaded the English fleet, and landed at Brixham on Tor
Bay on Nov. 5 (Nov. 15, New Style), 1688. In the subsequent
"campaign," James's Protestant officers deserted to the enemy in
such large numbers that he dared not commit the army to a pitched battle.
This, together with the defection of his daughter Anne, finally shattered
his nerve. He attempted to flee to France but was intercepted in Kent; 12
days later, on December 23, he was allowed to escape. On Feb. 12, 1689, the Convention
Parliament declared that James had abdicated and next day offered the
crown to William and Mary. The Scots Parliament followed suit in May.
In March 1689 James landed in
Ireland, and a Parliament summoned to Dublin acknowledged him as king. But
his Irish-French army was defeated by William at the Boyne (July 1 [July 11,
New Style] 1690), and he returned to France. William's generals reconquered
Ireland the following year. In Ireland James had shown none of his former
military ability, and he now aged rapidly, falling increasingly under the
influence of his pietistic wife. He became daily more absorbed in his
devotions, and his more aggressive supporters soon came to regard him as
something of a liability. The Treaty of Rijswijk
between England and France (1697) removed his last hopes of restoration. (J.P.K.)
(see also Boyne,
Battle of the)
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
F.C. Turner, James II (1948); Maurice Ashley, The Glorious Revolution of 1688 (1966), and James II (1977). |
