Who was the last Catholic monarch to reign over England?
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The Kingdom of England was a sovereign state on the island of Great Britain from the 10th century—when it emerged from various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms—until 1707, when it united with Scotland to form the Kingdom of Great Britain.

In the early 11th century the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, united by Æthelstan (r. 927–939), became part of the North Sea Empire of Cnut the Great, a personal union between England, Denmark and Norway.  The Norman conquest of England in 1066 led to the transfer of the English capital city and chief royal residence from the Anglo-Saxon one at Winchester to Westminster, and the City of London quickly established itself as England's largest and principal commercial centre. 

Histories of the kingdom of England from the Norman conquest of 1066 conventionally distinguish periods named after successive ruling dynasties: Norman 1066–1154,  Plantagenet 1154–1485,  Tudor 1485–1603 and Stuart 1603–1714 (interrupted by the Interregnum of  1649–1660).
Dynastically, all English monarchs after 1066 ultimately claim descent from the Normans; the distinction of the Plantagenets is merely conventional, beginning with Henry II (reigned 1154-1189) as from that time, the Angevin kings became "more English in nature"; the houses of Lancaster and York are both Plantagenet cadet branches, the Tudor dynasty claimed descent from Edward III via John Beaufort and James VI and I  of the House of Stuart claimed descent from Henry VII via Margaret Tudor.

The completion of the conquest of Wales by Edward I in 1284 put Wales under the control of the English crown. Edward III (reigned 1327–1377) transformed the Kingdom of England into one of the most formidable military powers in Europe; his reign also saw vital developments in legislation and government—in particular the evolution of the English parliament.  From the 1340s the kings of England also laid claim to the crown of France, but after the Hundred Years' War and the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses in 1455, the English were no longer in any position to pursue their French claims and lost all their land on the continent, except for Calais. After the turmoils of the Wars of the Roses, the Tudor dynasty ruled during the English Renaissance and again extended English monarchical power beyond England proper, achieving the full union of England and the Principality of Wales in 1542. Henry VIII oversaw the English Reformation, and his daughter Elizabeth I (reigned 1558–1603) the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, meanwhile establishing England as a great power and laying the foundations of the British Empire by claiming possessions in the New World.

From the accession of James I in 1603, the Stuart dynasty ruled England in personal union with Scotland and Ireland. Under the Stuarts, the kingdom plunged into civil war, which culminated in the  execution of Charles I in 1649. The monarchy returned in 1660, but the Civil War  established  the precedent that an English monarch cannot govern without the consent of Parliament, although this concept became legally established only as part of the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
From this time the kingdom of England, as well as its successor state the United Kingdom, functioned in effect as a constitutional monarchy.The Constitution of the United Kingdom, with the reservation that it is "uncodified", is taken to be based in the Bill of Rights 1689. On 1 May 1707, under the terms of the Acts of Union 1707, the kingdoms of England and Scotland united to form the Kingdom of Great Britain.  

Name

The Anglo-Saxons referred to themselves as the Engle  or the Angelcynn, originally names of the Angles. They called their land Engla land, meaning "land of the English", 
by Æthelweard Latinized Anglia, from an original Anglia vetus, the purported homeland of the Angles (called Angulus by Bede).  The name Engla land became England by haplology during the Middle English period (Engle-land, Engelond).  The Latin name was Anglia or Anglorum terra, the Old French and Anglo-Norman one Angleterre.  By the 14th century, England was also used in reference to the entire island of Great Britain.

The standard title for all monarchs from Æthelstan until the time of King John was ' ("King of the English"). Canute the Great, a Dane, was the first king to call himself "King of England". In the Norman period ' remained standard, with occasional use of ' ("King of England"). The Empress Matilda styled herself ' ("Lady of the English"). From the time of King John onwards all other titles were eschewed in favour of ' or '. In 1604 James I, who had inherited the English throne the previous year, adopted the title (now usually rendered in English rather than Latin) King of Great Britain. The English and Scottish parliaments, however, did not recognise this title until the Acts of Union of 1707.

History

Anglo-Saxon England

The kingdom of England emerged from the gradual unification of the early medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdoms  known as the Heptarchy: East Anglia, Mercia, Northumbria, Kent, Essex, Sussex, and Wessex. The Viking invasions of the 9th century upset the balance of power between the English kingdoms, and native Anglo-Saxon life in general. The English lands were unified in the 10th century in a reconquest completed by King Æthelstan in 927.

During the Heptarchy, the most powerful king among the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms might become acknowledged as Bretwalda, a high king over the other kings. The decline of Mercia allowed Wessex to become more powerful. It absorbed the kingdoms of Kent and Sussex in 825. The kings of Wessex became increasingly dominant over the other kingdoms of England during the 9th century. In 827, Northumbria submitted to Egbert of Wessex at Dore. Thus Egbert briefly became the first king to reign over a united England.

In 886, Alfred the Great retook London, which he apparently regarded as a turning point in his reign. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that "all of the English people (all Angelcyn) not subject to the Danes submitted themselves to King Alfred."[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/657/657.txt The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle] Freely licensed version at Gutenberg Project. Note: This electronic edition is a collation of material from nine diverse extant versions of the Chronicle. It contains primarily the translation of Rev. James Ingram, as published in the Everyman edition. Asser added that "Alfred, king of the Anglo-Saxons, restored the city of London splendidly ... and made it habitable once more."  Alfred's "restoration" entailed reoccupying and refurbishing the nearly deserted Roman walled city, building quays along the Thames, and laying a new city street plan.  It is probably at this point that Alfred assumed the new royal style 'King of the Anglo-Saxons.'

During the following years Northumbria repeatedly changed hands between the English kings and the Norwegian invaders, but was definitively brought under English control by Eadred in 954, completing the unification of England. At about this time, Lothian, the northern part of Northumbria (Roman Bernicia), was ceded to the Kingdom of Scotland. On 12 July 927 the monarchs of Britain gathered at Eamont in Cumbria to recognise Æthelstan as king of the English. This can be considered England's 'foundation date', although the process of unification had taken almost 100 years.

England has remained in political unity ever since. During the reign of Æthelred the Unready (978–1016), a new wave of Danish invasions was orchestrated by Sweyn I of Denmark, culminating after a quarter-century of warfare in the Danish conquest of England in 1013. But Sweyn died on 2 February 1014, and Æthelred was restored to the throne. In 1015, Sweyn's son Cnut the Great launched a new invasion. The ensuing war ended with an agreement in 1016 between Canute and Æthelred's successor, Edmund Ironside, to divide England between them, but Edmund's death on 30 November of that year left England united under Danish rule. This continued for 26 years until the death of Harthacnut in June 1042. He was the son of Canute and Emma of Normandy (the widow of Æthelred the Unready) and had no heirs of his own; he was succeeded by his half-brother, Æthelred's son, Edward the Confessor. The Kingdom of England was once again independent.

Norman conquest

The peace lasted until the death of the childless Edward in January 1066. His brother-in-law was crowned King Harold, but his cousin William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, immediately claimed the throne for himself. William launched an invasion of England and landed in Sussex on 28 September 1066. Harold and his army were in York following their victory against the Norwegians at the Battle of Stamford Bridge (25 September 1066) when the news reached him. He decided to set out without delay and confront the Norman army in Sussex so marched southwards at once, despite the army not being properly rested following the battle with the Norwegians. The armies of Harold and William faced each other at the Battle of Hastings (14 October 1066), in which the English army, or Fyrd, was defeated, Harold and his two brothers were slain, and William emerged as victor. William was then able to conquer England with little further opposition. He was not, however, planning to absorb the Kingdom into the Duchy of Normandy. As a mere duke, William owed allegiance to Philip I of France, whereas in the independent Kingdom of England he could rule without interference. He was crowned on 25 December 1066 in Westminster Abbey, London.

High Middle Ages

In 1092, William II led an invasion of Strathclyde, a Celtic kingdom in what is now southwest Scotland and Cumbria. In doing so, he annexed what is now the county of Cumbria to England; this final annexation established what would become the traditional borders of England, which have remained largely unchanged since then (except for occasional and temporary changes).

In 1124, Henry I ceded what is now southeast Scotland (called Lothian) to the Kingdom of Scotland, in return for the King of Scotland's loyalty. This area of land had been English since its foundation in 927 AD, and before that had been a part of the Anglian Kingdom of Northumbria. Lothian contained what later became the Scottish capital, Edinburgh. This arrangement was later finalised in 1237 by the Treaty of York.

The Duchy of Aquitaine came into personal union with the Kingdom of England upon the accession of Henry II, who had married Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine. The Kingdom of England and the Duchy of Normandy remained in personal union until John Lackland, Henry II's son and fifth-generation descendant of William I, lost the continental possessions of the Duchy to Philip II of France in 1204. A few remnants of Normandy, including the Channel Islands, remained in John's possession, together with most of the Duchy of Aquitaine.

Up until the  Norman conquest of England, Wales had remained for the most part independent of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, although some Welsh kings did sometimes acknowledge the Bretwalda. Soon after the Norman conquest of England, however, some Norman lords began to attack Wales. They conquered and ruled parts of it, acknowledging the overlordship of the Norman kings of England but with considerable local independence. Over many years these "Marcher Lords" conquered more and more of Wales, against considerable resistance led by various Welsh princes, who also often acknowledged the overlordship of the Norman kings of England.

Edward I defeated Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, and so effectively conquered Wales, in 1282. He created the title Prince of Wales for his eldest son, the future Edward II, in 1301. Edward I's conquest was brutal and the subsequent repression considerable, as the magnificent Welsh castles such as Conwy, Harlech, and Caernarfon attest; but this event re-united under a single ruler the lands of Roman Britain for the first time since the establishment of the Kingdom of the Jutes in Kent in the 5th century, some 700 years before. Accordingly, this was a highly significant moment in the history of medieval England, as it re-established links with the pre-Saxon past. These links were exploited for political purposes to unite the peoples of the kingdom, including the Anglo-Normans, by popularising Welsh legends.

The Welsh language—derived from the British language, with significant Latin influences—continued to be spoken by the majority of the population of Wales for at least another 500 years, and is still a majority language in parts of the country.

Late Middle Ages

Edward III was the first English king to have a claim to the throne of France. His pursuit of the claim resulted in the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453), which pitted five kings of England of the House of Plantagenet against five kings of France of the Capetian House of Valois. Though the English won numerous victories, they were unable to overcome the numerical superiority of the French and their strategic use of gunpowder weapons. England was defeated at the Battle of Formigny in 1450 and finally at the Battle of Castillon in 1453, retaining only a single town in France, Calais.

During the Hundred Years' War an English identity began to develop in place of the previous division between the Norman lords and their Anglo-Saxon subjects. This was a consequence of sustained hostility to the increasingly nationalist French, whose kings and other leaders (notably the charismatic Joan of Arc) used a developing sense of French identity to help draw people to their cause. The Anglo-Normans became separate from their cousins who held lands mainly in France, who mocked the former for their archaic and bastardised spoken French. English also became the language of the law courts during this period.

The kingdom had little time to recover before entering the Wars of the Roses (1455–1487), a series of civil wars over possession of the throne between the House of Lancaster (whose heraldic symbol was the red rose) and the House of York (whose symbol was the white rose), each led by different branches of the descendants of Edward III. The end of these wars found the throne held by the descendant of an initially illegitimate member of the House of Lancaster, married to the eldest daughter of the House of York: Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. They were the founders of the Tudor dynasty, which ruled the Kingdom from 1485 to 1603.

Tudor period

Wales had retained a separate legal and administrative system, which had been established by Edward I in the late 13th century. The country was divided between the Marcher Lords owing feudal allegiance to the crown and the Principality of Wales. Under the Tudor monarchy, Henry VIII replaced the laws of Wales with those of England (under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542). Wales now was incorporated into the Kingdom of England, and henceforth was represented in the Parliament of England.

During the 1530s, Henry VIII overthrew the power of the Roman Catholic Church within the kingdom, replacing the pope as head of the English church and seizing the church's lands, thereby facilitating the creation of a new Protestant religion. This had the effect of aligning England with Scotland, which also gradually adopted a Protestant religion, whereas the most important continental powers, France and Spain, remained Roman Catholic.

In 1541, during Henry VIII's reign, the Parliament of Ireland proclaimed him king of Ireland, thereby bringing the Kingdom of Ireland into personal union with the Kingdom of England.

Calais, the last remaining continental possession of the Kingdom, was lost in 1558, during the reign of Philip and Mary I. Their successor, Elizabeth I, consolidated the new Protestant Church of England. She also began to build up the Kingdom's naval strength, on the foundations Henry VIII had laid down. In 1588, her new navy was strong enough to defeat the Spanish Armada, which had sought to invade England in order to put a Catholic monarch on the throne in her place.

Early Modern history

The House of Tudor ended with the death of Elizabeth I on 24 March 1603. James I ascended the throne of England and brought it into personal union with the Kingdom of Scotland. Despite the Union of the Crowns, the kingdoms remained separate and independent states: a state of affairs which lasted for more than a century.

Civil War and Interregnum

The Stuart kings overestimated the power of the English monarchy, and were cast down by Parliament in 1645 and 1688. In the first instance, Charles I's introduction of new forms of taxation in defiance of Parliament led to the English Civil War (1641–45), in which the king was defeated, and to the abolition of the monarchy under Oliver Cromwell during the interregnum of 1649–1660. Henceforth, the monarch could reign only at the will of Parliament.

After the trial and execution of Charles I in January 1649, the Rump Parliament passed an act declaring England to be a Commonwealth on 19 May 1649.  The monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished, and so the House of Commons became a unitary legislative chamber with a new body, the Council of State becoming the executive. However the Army remain the dominant institution in the new republic and the most prominent general was Oliver Cromwell. The Commonwealth fought wars in Ireland and Scotland which were subdued and placed under Commonwealth military occupation.

In April 1653 Cromwell and the other Grandees of the New Model Army, frustrated with the  members of the Rump Parliament who would not pass legislation to dissolve the Rump and to allow a new more representative parliament to be elected, stopped the Rumps session by force of arms and declared the Rump dissolved.

After an experiment with a Nominated Assembly (Barebone's Parliament), the Grandees in the Army, through the Council of State imposed a new constitutional arrangement under a written constitution called the Instrument of Government. Under the Instrument of Government executive power lay with a Lord Protector (an office be held for life of the incumbent) and there were to be triennial Parliaments, with each sitting for at least five months. Article 23 of the Instrument of Government stated that Oliver Cromwell was to be the first Lord Protector. The Instrument of Government was replaced by a second constitution (the Humble Petition and Advice) under which the Lord Protector could nominate his successor. Cromwell nominated his son Richard who became Lord Protector on the death of Oliver on 3 September 1658.

Restoration and Glorious Revolution

Richard proved to ineffectual and unable to maintain his rule. He resigned his title and retired into obscurity. The Rump Parliament was recalled and there was a second period where the executive power lay with the Council of state. But this restoration of Commonwealth rule similar to that before the Protectorate, proved to be unstable, and the exiled claimant, Charles II, was restored to the throne in 1660.

Following the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, an attempt by James II to reintroduce Roman Catholicism—a century after its suppression by the Tudors—led to the Glorious Revolution of 1688, in which he was deposed by Parliament. The Crown was then offered by Parliament to James II's Protestant daughter and son-in-law/nephew, William III and Mary II.

Union with Scotland

In the Scottish case, the attractions were partly financial and partly to do with removing English trade sanctions put in place through the Alien Act 1705. The English were more anxious about the royal succession. The death of William III in 1702 had led to the accession of his sister-in-law Anne to the thrones of England and Scotland, but her only surviving child had died in 1700, and the English Act of Settlement 1701 had given the succession to the English crown to the Protestant House of Hanover. Securing the same succession in Scotland became the primary object of English strategic thinking towards Scotland. By 1704, the Union of the Crowns was in crisis, with the Scottish Act of Security allowing for the Scottish Parliament to choose a different monarch, which could in turn lead to an independent foreign policy during a major European war. The English establishment did not wish to risk a Stuart on the Scottish throne, nor the possibility of a Scottish military alliance with another power.

A Treaty of Union was agreed on 22 July 1706, and following the Acts of Union of 1707, which created the Kingdom of Great Britain, the independence of the kingdoms of England and Scotland came to an end on 1 May 1707. The Acts of Union created a customs union and monetary union and provided that any "laws and statutes" that were "contrary to or inconsistent with the terms" of the Acts would "cease and become void."

The English and Scottish Parliaments were merged into the Parliament of Great Britain, located in Westminster, London. At this point England ceased to exist as a separate political entity, and since then has had no national government. The laws of England were unaffected, with the legal jurisdiction continuing to be that of England and Wales, while Scotland continued to have its own laws and law courts. This continued after the 1801 union between the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland, forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Territorial divisions

The counties of England were established for administration by the Normans, in most cases based on earlier  shires established by the Anglo-Saxons.  They ceased to be used for administration only with the creation of the administrative counties in 1889. 

Unlike the partly self-governing boroughs that covered urban areas, the counties of medieval England existed primarily as a means of enforcing central government power, enabling monarchs to exercise control over local areas through their chosen representatives – originally Sheriffs and later the Lord Lieutenants – and their subordinate Justices of the Peace. 
Counties were used initially for the administration of justice, collection of taxes and organisation of the military, and later for local government and electing parliamentary representation. 

Although all of England was divided into shires by the time of the Norman conquest, some counties were formed considerably later, up to the 16th century. Because of their differing origins the counties varied considerably in size. The county boundaries were fairly static between the 16th century Laws in Wales acts and the Local Government Act 1888.[http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/text/chap_page.jsp?t_id
Cen_Guide&c_id19&show
ALL Vision of Britain] — Census Geographies. Retrieved 19 October 2006. Each shire was responsible for gathering taxes for the central government; for local defence; and for justice, through assize courts.

The power of the feudal barons to control their landholding was considerably weakened in 1290 by the statute of Quia Emptores.   Feudal baronies became perhaps obsolete (but not extinct) on the abolition of feudal tenure during the Civil War, as confirmed by the Tenures Abolition Act 1660 passed under the Restoration which took away Knights service and other legal rights.
Tenure by knight-service was abolished and discharged and the lands covered by such tenures, including once-feudal baronies, were henceforth held by socage (i.e. in exchange for monetary rents).
The English Fitzwalter Case in 1670 ruled that barony by tenure had been discontinued for many years and any claims to a peerage on such basis, meaning a right to sit in the House of Lords, were not to be revived, nor any right of succession based on them.

The Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284 followed the conquest of Wales by Edward I of England.  It assumed the lands held by the Princes of Gwynedd under the title "Prince of Wales" as legally part of the lands of England, and established shire counties on the English model over those areas. The Marcher Lords were progressively tied to the English kings by the grants of lands and lordships in England. The Council of Wales and the Marches, administered from Ludlow Castle, was initially established in 1472 by Edward IV of England to govern the lands held under the Principality of Wales.William Searle Holdsworth, "A History of English Law," Little, Brown, and Company, 1912, pg. 502 Under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542 introduced under Henry VIII, the jurisdiction of the marcher lords was abolished in 1536.  The Acts had the effect of annexing Wales to England and creating a single state and legal jurisdiction, commonly referred to as England and Wales. James II and VII (14 October 1633O.S. – 16 September 1701An assertion found in many sources that James II died 6 September 1701 (17 September 1701 New Style) may result from a miscalculation done by an author of anonymous "An Exact Account of the Sickness and Death of the Late King James II, as also of the Proceedings at St. Germains thereupon, 1701, in a letter from an English gentleman in France to his friend in London" (Somers Tracts, ed. 1809–1815, XI, pp. 339–342). The account reads: "And on Friday the 17th instant, about three in the afternoon, the king died, the day he always fasted in memory of our blessed Saviour's passion, the day he ever desired to die on, and the ninth hour, according to the Jewish account, when our Saviour was crucified." As 17 September 1701 New Style falls on a Saturday and the author insists that James died on Friday, "the day he ever desired to die on", an inevitable conclusion is that the author miscalculated the date, which later made it to various reference works. See "English Historical Documents 1660–1714", ed. by Andrew Browning (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 136–138.) was King of England and Ireland as James II and King of Scotland as James VII,  from 6 February 1685 until he was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. He was the last Roman Catholic monarch to reign over the Kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland.

The second surviving son of Charles I, he ascended the throne upon the death of his brother, Charles II. Members of Britain's Protestant political elite increasingly suspected him of being pro-French and pro-Catholic and of having designs on becoming an absolute monarch. When he produced a Catholic heir, leading nobles called on his Protestant son-in-law and nephew William of Orange to land an invasion army from the Netherlands, which he did in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. James fled England (and thus was held to have abdicated).  He was replaced by his eldest, Protestant daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange. James made one serious attempt to recover his crowns from William and Mary when he landed in Ireland in 1689. After the defeat of the Jacobite forces by the Williamites at the Battle of the Boyne in July 1690, James returned to France. He lived out the rest of his life as a pretender at a court sponsored by his cousin and ally, King Louis XIV.

James is best known for his struggles with the English Parliament and his attempts to create religious liberty for English Roman Catholics and Protestant nonconformists, against the wishes of the Anglican establishment. However, he also continued the persecution of the Presbyterian Covenanters in Scotland. Parliament, opposed to the growth of absolutism that was occurring in other European countries, as well as to the loss of legal supremacy of the Church of England, saw their opposition as a way to preserve what they regarded as traditional English liberties. This tension made James's four-year reign a struggle for supremacy between the English Parliament and the Crown, resulting in his deposition, the passage of the Bill of Rights, and the accession of his daughter and her husband as king and queen.

Early life

Birth

James, the second surviving son of King Charles I and his wife, Henrietta Maria of France, was born at St. James's Palace in London on 14 October 1633.  Later that same year, he was baptised by William Laud, the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury.Callow, 31 He was educated by private tutors, along with his brother, the future King Charles II, and the two sons of the Duke of Buckingham, George and Francis Villiers.  At the age of three, James was appointed Lord High Admiral; the position was initially honorary, but would become a substantive office after the Restoration, when James was an adult. 

He was designated Duke of York at birth, invested with the Order of the Garter in 1642,  and formally created Duke of York in January 1644.

Civil War

As the King's disputes with the English Parliament grew into the English Civil War, James stayed in Oxford, a Royalist stronghold.  When the city surrendered after the siege of Oxford in 1646, Parliamentary leaders ordered the Duke of York to be confined in St. James's Palace.  In 1648, he escaped from the Palace, aided by Joseph Bampfield, and from there he went to The Hague in disguise.  When Charles I was executed by the rebels in 1649, monarchists proclaimed James's older brother as Charles II of England.Royle, 517 Charles II was recognised as king by the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of Ireland, and was crowned King of Scotland at Scone in 1651. Although he was proclaimed King in Jersey, Charles was unable to secure the crown of England and consequently fled to France and exile.

Exile in France

Like his brother, James sought refuge in France, serving in the French army under Turenne against the Fronde, and later against their Spanish allies.Miller, 16–17 In the French army James had his first true experience of battle where, according to one observer, he "ventures himself and chargeth gallantly where anything is to be done".

In the meantime, Charles was attempting to reclaim his throne, but France, although hosting the exiles, had allied itself with Oliver Cromwell. In 1656, Charles turned instead to Spain – an enemy of France – for support, and an alliance was made. In consequence, James was expelled from France and forced to leave Turenne's army.  James quarrelled with his brother over the diplomatic choice of Spain over France. Exiled and poor, there was little that either Charles or James could do about the wider political situation, and James ultimately travelled to Bruges and (along with his younger brother, Henry) joined the Spanish army under Louis, Prince of Condé, fighting against his former French comrades at the Battle of the Dunes.  

During his service in the Spanish army, James became friendly with two Irish Catholic brothers in the Royalist entourage, Peter and Richard Talbot, and became somewhat estranged from his brother's Anglican advisers.  In 1659, the French and Spanish made peace. James, doubtful of his brother's chances of regaining the throne, considered taking a Spanish offer to be an admiral in their navy.  Ultimately, he declined the position; by the next year the situation in England had changed, and Charles II was proclaimed King. 

Restoration

First marriage

After Richard Cromwell's resignation as Lord Protector in 1659 and the subsequent collapse of the Commonwealth in 1660, Charles II was restored to the English throne. Although James was the heir presumptive, it seemed unlikely that he would inherit the Crown, as Charles was still a young man capable of fathering children.  On 31 December 1660, following his brother's restoration, James was created Duke of Albany in Scotland, to go along with his English title, Duke of York.  Upon his return to England, James prompted an immediate controversy by announcing his engagement to Anne Hyde, the daughter of Charles's chief minister, Edward Hyde.  In 1659, while trying to seduce her, James promised he would marry Anne.  Anne became pregnant in 1660, but following the Restoration and James's return to power, no one at the royal court expected a prince to marry a commoner, no matter what he had pledged beforehand.Miller, 44–45 Although nearly everyone, including Anne's father, urged the two not to marry, the couple married secretly, then went through an official marriage ceremony on 3 September 1660 in London. Their first child, Charles, was born less than two months later, but died in infancy, as did five further sons and daughters. Only two daughters survived: Mary (born 30 April 1662) and Anne (born 6 February 1665).  Samuel Pepys wrote that James was fond of his children and his role as a father, and played with them "like an ordinary private father of a child", a contrast to the distant parenting common with royalty at the time.  James's wife was devoted to him and influenced many of his decisions.  Even so, he kept mistresses, including Arabella Churchill and Catherine Sedley, and was reputed to be "the most unguarded ogler of his time."  Anne Hyde died in 1671.

Military and political offices

After the Restoration, James was confirmed as Lord High Admiral, an office that carried with it the subsidiary appointments of Governor of Portsmouth and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.  James commanded the Royal Navy during the Second (1665–1667) and Third Anglo-Dutch Wars (1672–1674).  Following the raid on the Medway in 1667, James oversaw the survey and re-fortification of the southern coast.  The office of Lord High Admiral, combined with his revenue from post office and wine tariffs (granted him by Charles upon his restoration) gave James enough money to keep a sizeable court household. 

In 1664, Charles granted American territory between the Delaware and Connecticut rivers to James. Following its capture by the English the former Dutch territory of New Netherland and its principal port, New Amsterdam, were named the Province and City of New York in James's honour. After the founding, the duke gave part of the colony to proprietors George Carteret and John Berkeley. Fort Orange, 240 km north on the Hudson River, was renamed Albany after James's Scottish title. In 1683, he became the governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, but did not take an active role in its governance. James also headed the Royal African Company, a slave trading company. 

In September 1666, his brother Charles put him in charge of firefighting operations in the Great Fire of London, in the absence of action by Lord Mayor Thomas Bloodworth. This was not a political office, but his actions and leadership were noteworthy. "The Duke of York hath won the hearts of the people with his continual and indefatigable pains day and night in helping to quench the Fire", wrote a witness in a letter on 8 September. 

Conversion to Roman Catholicism and second marriage

James's time in France had exposed him to the beliefs and ceremonies of Catholicism; he and his wife, Anne, became drawn to that faith.  James took Eucharist in the Roman Catholic Church in 1668 or 1669, although his conversion was kept secret for some time and he continued to attend Anglican services until 1676.  In spite of his conversion, James continued to associate primarily with Anglicans, including John Churchill and George Legge, as well as French Protestants, such as Louis de Duras, the Earl of Feversham. 

Growing fears of Catholic influence at court led the English Parliament to introduce a new Test Act in 1673.Miller, 69–71 Under this Act, all civil and military officials were required to take an oath (in which they were required to disavow the doctrine of transubstantiation and denounce certain practices of the Catholic Church as superstitious and idolatrous) and to receive the Eucharist under the auspices of the Church of England.  James refused to perform either action, instead choosing to relinquish the post of Lord High Admiral. His conversion to Catholicism was thereby made public.

Charles II opposed the conversion, ordering that James's daughters, Mary and Anne, be raised as Protestants.  Nevertheless, he allowed James to marry the Catholic Mary of Modena, a fifteen-year-old Italian princess.  James and Mary were married by proxy in a Catholic ceremony on 20 September 1673.  On 21 November, Mary arrived in England and Nathaniel Crew, Bishop of Oxford, performed a brief Anglican service that did little more than recognise the Catholic marriage.  Many British people, distrustful of Catholicism, regarded the new Duchess of York as an agent of the Pope.  James was noted for his devotion. He once said, "If occasion were, I hope God would give me his grace to suffer death for the true Catholic religion as well as banishment." 

Exclusion Crisis

In 1677, James reluctantly consented to his daughter Mary's marriage to the Protestant William of Orange (who was also James's nephew, the son of his sister Mary, Princess Royal), acquiescing after his brother Charles and William had agreed upon the marriage.  Despite the Protestant marriage, fears of a potential Catholic monarch persisted, intensified by the failure of Charles II and his wife, Catherine of Braganza, to produce any children.  A defrocked Anglican clergyman, Titus Oates, spoke of a "Popish Plot" to kill Charles and to put the Duke of York on the throne.  The fabricated plot caused a wave of anti-Catholic hysteria to sweep across the nation.

In England, the Earl of Shaftesbury, a former government minister and now a leading opponent of Catholicism, attempted to have James excluded from the line of succession.  Some members of Parliament even proposed that the crown go to Charles's illegitimate son, James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth.  In 1679, with the Exclusion Bill in danger of passing, Charles II dissolved Parliament.  Two further Parliaments were elected in 1680 and 1681, but were dissolved for the same reason.  The Exclusion Crisis contributed to the development of the English two-party system:  the Whigs were those who supported the Bill, while the Tories were those who opposed it.  Ultimately, the succession was not altered, but James was convinced to withdraw from all policy-making bodies and to accept a lesser role in his brother's government. 

On the orders of the King, James left England for Brussels.  In 1680, he was appointed Lord High Commissioner of Scotland and took up residence at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh to suppress an uprising and oversee royal government.  James returned to England for a time when Charles was stricken ill and appeared to be near death.  The hysteria of the accusations eventually faded, but James's relations with many in the English Parliament, including the Earl of Danby, a former ally, were forever strained and a solid segment turned against him. 

Return to favour

In 1683, a plot was uncovered to assassinate Charles and James and spark a republican revolution to re-establish a government of the Cromwellian style.Miller, 115–116 The conspiracy, known as the Rye House Plot, backfired upon its conspirators and provoked a wave of sympathy for the King and James.  Several notable Whigs, including the Earl of Essex and the King's illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, were implicated. Monmouth initially confessed to complicity in the plot, implicating fellow-plotters, but later recanted. Essex committed suicide and Monmouth, along with several others, was obliged to flee into Continental exile.  Charles reacted to the plot by increasing repression of Whigs and dissenters. Taking advantage of James's rebounding popularity, Charles invited him back onto the privy council in 1684.  While some in the English Parliament remained wary of the possibility of a Catholic king, the threat of excluding James from the throne had passed.

Reign

Accession to the throne

Charles died in 1685 from apoplexy after converting to Catholicism on his deathbed.  Having no legitimate children, Charles was succeeded by his brother James, who reigned in England and Ireland as James II, and in Scotland as James VII. There was little initial opposition to his accession, and there were widespread reports of public rejoicing at the orderly succession.Miller, 120–121 James wanted to proceed quickly to the coronation, and was crowned with his wife at Westminster Abbey on 23 April 1685.  The new Parliament that assembled in May 1685, which gained the name of "Loyal Parliament", was initially favourable to James, and the new King sent word that even most of the former exclusionists would be forgiven if they acquiesced to his rule. Most of Charles's officers continued in office, the exceptions being the promotion of James's brothers-in-law, the Earls of Clarendon and Rochester, and the demotion of Halifax.  Parliament granted James a generous life income, including all of the proceeds of tonnage and poundage and the customs duties.  James worked harder as king than his brother had, but was less willing to compromise when his advisers disagreed. 

Two rebellions

Soon after becoming king, James faced a rebellion in southern England led by his nephew, the Duke of Monmouth, and another rebellion in Scotland led by Archibald Campbell, the Earl of Argyll.  Argyll and Monmouth both began their expeditions from Holland, where James's nephew and son-in-law, William of Orange, had neglected to detain them or put a stop to their recruitment efforts. 

Argyll sailed to Scotland and, on arriving there, raised recruits mainly from his own clan, the Campbells.Harris, 75–76 The rebellion was quickly crushed, and Argyll was captured at Inchinnan on 18 June 1685. Having arrived with fewer than 300 men and unable to convince many more to flock to his standard, he never posed a credible threat to James.  Argyll was taken as a prisoner to Edinburgh. A new trial was not commenced because Argyll had previously been tried and sentenced to death. The King confirmed the earlier death sentence and ordered that it be carried out within three days of receiving the confirmation.

Monmouth's rebellion was coordinated with Argyll's, but the former was more dangerous to James. Monmouth had proclaimed himself King at Lyme Regis on 11 June.  He attempted to raise recruits but was unable to gather enough rebels to defeat even James's small standing army.Miller, 141 Monmouth's rebellion attacked the King's forces at night, in an attempt at surprise, but was defeated at the Battle of Sedgemoor. The King's forces, led by Feversham and Churchill, quickly dispersed the ill-prepared rebels. Monmouth was captured and later executed at the Tower of London on 15 July.  The King's judges—most notably, George Jeffreys—condemned many of the rebels to transportation and indentured servitude in the West Indies in a series of trials that came to be known as the Bloody Assizes.  Some 250 of the rebels were executed. While both rebellions were defeated easily, they hardened James's resolve against his enemies and increased his suspicion of the Dutch. 

Religious liberty and the dispensing power

To protect himself from further rebellions, James sought safety by enlarging his standing army.Miller, 142–143 This alarmed his subjects, not only because of the trouble soldiers caused in the towns, but because it was against the English tradition to keep a professional army in peacetime.  Even more alarming to Parliament was James's use of his dispensing power to allow Roman Catholics to command several regiments without having to take the oath mandated by the Test Act. When even the previously supportive Parliament objected to these measures, James ordered Parliament prorogued in November 1685, never to meet again in his reign.  In the beginning of 1686 two papers were found in Charles II's strong box and his closet, in his own hand, stating the arguments for Catholicism over Protestantism. James published these papers with a declaration signed by his sign manual and challenged the Archbishop of Canterbury and the whole Anglican episcopal bench to refute Charles's arguments: "Let me have a solid answer, and in a gentlemanlike style; and it may have the effect which you so much desire of bringing me over to your church." The Archbishop refused on the grounds of respect for the late king. 

James advocated repeal of the penal laws in all three of his kingdoms, but in the early years of his reign he refused to allow those dissenters who did not petition for relief to receive it.  James sent a letter to the Scottish Parliament at its opening in 1685, declaring his wish for new penal laws against refractory Presbyterians and lamented that he was not there in person to promote such a law. In response, the Parliament passed an Act that stated, "whoever should preach in a conventicle under a roof, or should attend, either as preacher or as a hearer, a conventicle in the open air, should be punished with death and confiscation of property".  In March 1686, James sent a letter to the Scottish Privy Council advocating toleration for Catholics but that the persecution of the Presbyterian Covenanters should continue, calling them to London when they refused to acquiesce his wishes.Macaulay, 385-86; Turner, 373 The Privy Councillors explained that they would grant relief to Catholics only if a similar relief was provided for the Covenanters and if James promised not to attempt anything that would harm the Protestant religion. James agreed to a degree of relief to Presbyterians, but not to the full toleration he wanted for Catholics, declaring that the Protestant religion was false and he would not promise not to prejudice a false religion.

James allowed Catholics to occupy the highest offices of the Kingdoms, and received at his court the papal nuncio, Ferdinando d'Adda, the first representative from Rome to London since the reign of Mary I.  James's Jesuit confessor, Edward Petre, was a particular object of Protestant ire.  When the King's Secretary of State, the Earl of Sunderland, began replacing office-holders at court with Catholic favourites, James began to lose the confidence of many of his Anglican supporters.Miller, 150–152 Sunderland's purge of office-holders even extended to the King's Anglican brothers-in-law and their supporters. Catholics made up no more than one-fiftieth of the English population.  In May 1686, James sought to obtain a ruling from the English common-law courts that showed his power to dispense with Acts of Parliament was legal. He dismissed judges who disagreed with him on this matter, as well as the Solicitor General Heneage Finch.  The case, Godden v. Hales, affirmed his dispensing power,  with eleven out of the twelve judges in Godden ruling in favour of the dispensing power. 

In 1687, James issued the Declaration of Indulgence, also known as the Declaration for Liberty of Conscience, in which he used his dispensing power to negate the effect of laws punishing Catholics and Protestant Dissenters.  He attempted to garner support for his tolerationist policy by giving a speaking tour in the West of England in the summer of 1687.  As part of this tour, he gave a speech at Chester where he said, "suppose... there should be a law made that all black men should be imprisoned, it would be unreasonable and we had as little reason to quarrel with other men for being of different [religious] opinions as for being of different complexions."  At the same time, James provided partial toleration in Scotland, using his dispensing power to grant relief to Catholics and partial relief to Presbyterians. 

In 1688, James ordered the Declaration read from the pulpits of every Anglican church, further alienating the Anglican bishops against the Catholic governor of their church.Harris, 216–224 While the Declaration elicited some thanks from Catholics and dissenters, it left the Established Church, the traditional ally of the monarchy, in the difficult position of being forced to erode its own privileges. James provoked further opposition by attempting to reduce the Anglican monopoly on education.Harris, 224–229 At the University of Oxford, James offended Anglicans by allowing Catholics to hold important positions in Christ Church and University College, two of Oxford's largest colleges. He also attempted to force the Protestant Fellows of Magdalen College to elect Anthony Farmer, a man of generally ill repute who was believed to be secretly Catholic,Farmer's exact religious affiliation is unclear. Macaulay says Farmer "pretended to turn Papist". Prall, at 148, calls him a "Catholic sympathizer". Miller, at 170, says "although he had not declared himself a Catholic, it was believed he was no longer an Anglican."  Ashley, at 89, does not refer to Farmer by name, but only as the King's Catholic nominee. All sources agree that Farmer's bad reputation as a "person of scandalous character" was as much a deterrent to his nomination as his uncertain religious loyalties. See, e.g., Prall, 148. as their president when the Protestant incumbent died, a violation of the Fellows' right to elect a candidate of their own choosing.

In 1687 James prepared to pack Parliament with his supporters so that it would repeal the Test Act and the penal laws. James was convinced by addresses from Dissenters that he had their support and so could dispense with relying on Tories and Anglicans. James instituted a wholesale purge of those in offices under the crown opposed to James's plan, appointing new lords-lieutenant and remodelling the corporations governing towns and livery companies.  In October James gave orders for the lords-lieutenant in the provinces to provide three standard questions to all members of the Commission of the Peace: 1. Would they consent to the repeal of the Test Act and the penal laws? 2. Would they assist candidates who would do so? 3. Would they accept the Declaration of Indulgence? During the first three months of 1688, hundreds of those asked the three questions who gave hostile replies were dismissed.  Corporations were purged by agents, known as the regulators, who were given wide discretionary powers in an attempt to create a permanent royal electoral machine.  Most of the regulators were Baptists and the new town officials that they recommended included Quakers, Baptists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians and Catholics, as well as Anglicans.  Finally, on 24 August 1688, James ordered the issue of writs for a general election.  However, upon realising in September that William of Orange was going to land in England, James withdrew the writs and subsequently wrote to the lords-lieutenant to inquire over allegations of abuses committed during the regulations and election preparations as part of the concessions James made to win support. 

Glorious Revolution

In April 1688, James re-issued the Declaration of Indulgence, subsequently ordering Anglican clergy to read it in their churches.  When seven Bishops, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, submitted a petition requesting the reconsideration of the King's religious policies, they were arrested and tried for seditious libel.  Public alarm increased when Queen Mary gave birth to a Roman Catholic son and heir, James Francis Edward on 10 June of that year.  When James's only possible successors were his two Protestant daughters, Anglicans could see his pro-Catholic policies as a temporary phenomenon, but when the Prince's birth opened the possibility of a permanent Catholic dynasty, such men had to reconsider their position.Harris, 271–272; Ashley, 110–111 Threatened by a Catholic dynasty, several influential Protestants claimed the child was "supposititious" and had been smuggled into the Queen's bedchamber in a warming pan.  They had already entered into negotiations with William, Prince of Orange, when it became known the Queen was pregnant, and the birth of James's son reinforced their convictions. 

On 30 June 1688, a group of seven Protestant nobles invited the Prince of Orange to come to England with an army.  By September, it had become clear that William sought to invade.Miller, 190–196 Believing that his own army would be adequate, James refused the assistance of Louis XIV, fearing that the English would oppose French intervention. When William arrived on 5 November 1688, many Protestant officers, including Churchill, defected and joined William, as did James's own daughter, Princess Anne.  James lost his nerve and declined to attack the invading army, despite his army's numerical superiority.  On 11 December, James tried to flee to France, allegedly first throwing the Great Seal of the Realm into the River Thames.Miller, 205–209  He was captured in Kent; later, he was released and placed under Dutch protective guard. Having no desire to make James a martyr, the Prince of Orange let him escape on 23 December. James was received by his cousin and ally, Louis XIV, who offered him a palace and a pension.
 

William convened a Convention Parliament to decide how to handle James's flight. While the Parliament refused to depose him, they declared that James, having fled to France and dropped the Great Seal into the Thames, had effectively abdicated the throne, and that the throne had thereby become vacant.  To fill this vacancy, James's daughter Mary was declared Queen; she was to rule jointly with her husband William, who would be king. The Parliament of Scotland on 11 April 1689, declared James to have forfeited the throne.  The English Parliament passed a Bill of Rights that denounced James for abusing his power. The abuses charged to James included the suspension of the Test Acts, the prosecution of the Seven Bishops for merely petitioning the crown, the establishment of a standing army, and the imposition of cruel punishments.  The Bill also declared that henceforth, no Roman Catholic was permitted to ascend the English throne, nor could any English monarch marry a Roman Catholic. 

Later years

War in Ireland

With the assistance of French troops, James landed in Ireland in March 1689.  The Irish Parliament did not follow the example of the English Parliament; it declared that James remained King and passed a massive bill of attainder against those who had rebelled against him.  At James's urging, the Irish Parliament passed an Act for Liberty of Conscience that granted religious freedom to all Roman Catholics and Protestants in Ireland.  James worked to build an army in Ireland, but was ultimately defeated at the Battle of the Boyne on 1 July 1690 when William arrived, personally leading an army to defeat James and reassert English control.Harris, 446–449 James fled to France once more, departing from Kinsale, never to return to any of his former kingdoms. Because he deserted his Irish supporters, James became known in Ireland as Séamus an Chaca or "James the Shit".   In contrast to this popular perception, Breandán Ó Buachalla argued that "Irish political poetry for most of the eighteenth century is essentially Jacobite poetry",  and both Ó Buachalla and Éamonn Ó Ciardha argued that James and his successors played a central role as messianic figures throughout the eighteenth century for all classes in Ireland. 

Return to exile and death

In France, James was allowed to live in the royal château of Saint-Germain-en-Laye.  James's wife and some of his supporters fled with him, including the Earl of Melfort; most, but not all, were Roman Catholic.  In 1692, James's last child, Louisa Maria Teresa, was born.  Some supporters in England attempted to assassinate William III to restore James to the throne in 1696, but the plot failed and the backlash made James's cause less popular.  Louis XIV's offer to have James elected King of Poland in the same year was rejected, for James feared that acceptance of the Polish crown might (in the minds of the English people) render him incapable of being King of England. After Louis concluded peace with William in 1697, he ceased to offer much in the way of assistance to James. 

During his last years, James lived as an austere penitent.  He wrote a memorandum for his son advising him on how to govern England, specifying that Catholics should possess one Secretary of State, one Commissioner of the Treasury, the Secretary at War, with the majority of the officers in the army. 

He died of a brain haemorrhage on 16 September 1701 at Saint-Germain-en-Laye.Miller, 240  James's heart was placed in a silver-gilt locket and given to the convent at Chaillot, and his brain was placed in a lead casket and given to the Scots College in Paris. His  entrails were placed in two gilt urns and sent to the parish church of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and the English Jesuit college at Saint-Omer, while the flesh from his right arm was given to the English Augustinian nuns of Paris. 

James's body was laid to rest in a triple sarcophagus (consisting of two wooden coffins and one of lead) at the Chapel of Saint Edmund in the Church of the English Benedictines in the Rue St. Jacques in Paris, with a funeral oration by Henri-Emmanuel de Roquette. James was not buried, but put in one of the side chapels. Lights were kept burning round his coffin until the French Revolution. In 1734, the Archbishop of Paris heard evidence to support James's canonisation, but nothing came of it. During the French Revolution, James's tomb was raided.Miller, 240; Waller, 401; MacLeod, 349. MacLeod and Waller say all of James's remains were lost in the French Revolution. [http://jacobite.ca/gazetteer/France/SaintGermain.htm McFerran] says parts of his bowel sent to the parish church of St. Germain-en-Laye were rediscovered in 1824 and are the only known remains left. The English Illustrated Magazines [https://books.google.com/books?id
I4oX7koMPh8C&pgPA592&lpg
PA592&dqparish+church+%22saint+germain+en+laye%22&source
web&ots40cIBlBhmE&sig
h8QKaqjxgMhi2sp2UtW5qEYpwxE article] on St. Germain from September 1901 concurs. Hilliam, 205. Hilliam disputes that his remains were either scattered or lost, stating that when revolutionaries broke into the church, they were amazed at the body's preservation and it was put on public exhibition where miracles were said to have happened. Hilliam states that the body was then kept "above ground" until George IV heard about it and ordered the body buried in the parish church of St Germain-en-Laye in 1824.

Succession

James's younger daughter Anne succeeded to the throne when William III died in 1702. The Act of Settlement provided that, if the line of succession established in the Bill of Rights were extinguished, the crown would go to a German cousin, Sophia, Electress of Hanover, and to her Protestant heirs.Harris, 493 Sophia was a granddaughter of James VI and I through his eldest daughter, Elizabeth Stuart, the sister of King Charles I. Thus, when Anne died in 1714 (less than two months after the death of Sophia), the crown was inherited by George I, Sophia's son, the Elector of Hanover and Anne's second cousin.

James's son James Francis Edward was recognised as King at his father's death by Louis XIV of France and James's remaining supporters (later known as Jacobites) as "James III and VIII."  He led a rising in Scotland in 1715 shortly after George I's accession, but was defeated.  Jacobites rose again in 1745 led by Charles Edward Stuart, James II's grandson, and were again defeated.  Since then, no serious attempt to restore the Stuart heir has been made. Charles's claims passed to his younger brother Henry Benedict Stuart, the Dean of the College of Cardinals of the Catholic Church.  Henry was the last of James II's legitimate descendants, and no relative has publicly acknowledged the Jacobite claim since his death in 1807. 

Historiography

Historical analysis of James II has been somewhat revised since Whig historians, led by Lord Macaulay, cast James as a cruel absolutist and his reign as "tyranny which approached to insanity".  Subsequent scholars, such as G. M. Trevelyan (Macaulay's great-nephew) and David Ogg, while more balanced than Macaulay, still characterised James as a tyrant, his attempts at religious tolerance as a fraud, and his reign as an aberration in the course of British history.  In 1892, A. W. Ward wrote for the Dictionary of National Biography that James was "obviously a political and religious bigot", although never devoid of "a vein of patriotic sentiment"; "his conversion to the church of Rome made the emancipation of his fellow-catholics in the first instance, and the recovery of England for catholicism in the second, the governing objects of his policy." 

Hilaire Belloc, a writer and Catholic apologist, broke with this tradition in 1928, casting James as an honourable man and a true advocate for freedom of conscience, and his enemies "men in the small clique of great fortunes ... which destroyed the ancient monarchy of the English."  However, he observed that James "concluded the Catholic church to be the sole authoritative voice on earth, and thenceforward ... he not only stood firm against surrender but on no single occasion contemplated the least compromise or by a word would modify the impression made."  By the 1960s and 1970s, Maurice Ashley and Stuart Prall began to reconsider James's motives in granting religious toleration, while still taking note of James's autocratic rule.  Modern historians have moved away from the school of thought that preached the continuous march of progress and democracy, Ashley contending that "history is, after all, the story of human beings and individuals, as well as of the classes and the masses."Ashley, 9 He cast James II and William III as "men of ideals as well as human weaknesses." John Miller, writing in 2000, accepted the claims of James's absolutism, but argued that "his main concern was to secure religious liberty and civil equality for Catholics. Any 'absolutist' methods ... were essentially means to that end."  In 2004, W. A. Speck wrote in the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography that "James was genuinely committed to religious toleration, but also sought to increase the power of the crown."W. A. Speck, "[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/14593 James II and VII (1633–1701)]", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edn, May 2006. Retrieved 15 October 2007. He "wished that all his subjects could be as convinced as he was that the Catholic church was the one true church. He was also convinced that the established church was maintained artificially by penal laws that proscribed nonconformity. If these were removed, and conversions to Catholicism were encouraged, then many would take place.  In the event his optimism was misplaced, for few converted.  James underestimated the appeal of protestantism in general and the Church of England in particular. His was the zeal and even bigotry of a narrow-minded convert..." He added that, unlike the government of the Netherlands, "James was too autocratic to combine freedom of conscience with popular government. He resisted any check on the monarch's power. That is why his heart was not in the concessions he had to make in 1688. He would rather live in exile with his principles intact than continue to reign as a limited monarch."

Tim Harris's conclusions from his 2006 book summarised the ambivalence of modern scholarship towards James II:

In 2009, Steven Pincus confronted that scholarly ambivalence in 1688: The First Modern Revolution. Pincus claims that James's reign must be understood within a context of economic change and European politics, and makes two major assertions about James II. The first of these is that James purposefully "followed the French Sun King, Louis XIV, in trying to create a modern Catholic polity. This involved not only trying to Catholicize England ... but also creating a modern, centralizing, and extremely bureaucratic state apparatus."  The second is that James was undone in 1688 far less by Protestant reaction against Catholicization than by nationwide hostile reaction against his intrusive bureaucratic state and taxation apparatus, expressed in massive popular support for William of Orange's armed invasion of England. Pincus presents James as neither naïve nor stupid nor egotistical. Instead, readers are shown an intelligent, clear-thinking strategically motivated monarch whose vision for a French authoritarian political model and alliance clashed with, and lost out to, alternative views that favoured an entrepreneurial Dutch economic model, feared French power, and were outraged by James's authoritarianism.

Scott Sowerby countered Pincus's thesis in 2013 in Making Toleration: The Repealers and the Glorious Revolution.  He noted that English taxes remained low during James II's reign, at about 4% of the English national income, and thus it was unlikely that James could have built a bureaucratic state on the model of Louis XIV's France, where taxes were at least twice as high as a proportion of GDP.   Sowerby also contends that James's policies of religious toleration attracted substantial support from religious nonconformists, including Quakers, Baptists, Congregationalists and Presbyterians, who were attracted by the king's push for a new "Magna Carta for liberty of conscience".  The king was overthrown, in Sowerby's view, largely because of fears among the Dutch and English elites that James might be aligning himself with Louis XIV in a supposed "holy league" to destroy Protestantism across northern Europe.  Sowerby presents James's reign as a struggle between those who believed that the king was sincerely devoted to liberty of conscience and those who were sceptical of the king's espousals of toleration and believed that he had a hidden agenda to overthrow English Protestantism.

Titles, styles, honours, and arms

Titles and styles

*14 October 1633 – 6 February 1685:  The Duke of York
*10 May 1659 – 6 February 1685: The Earl of Ulster 
*31 December 1660 – 6 February 1685:  The Duke of Albany
*6 February 1685 – 11 December 1688 (by Jacobites until 16 September 1701): His Majesty The King

The official style of James in England was "James the Second, by the Grace of God, King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc." The claim to France was only nominal, and was asserted by every English King from Edward III to George III, regardless of the amount of French territory actually controlled. In Scotland, he was "James the Seventh, by the Grace of God, King of Scotland, England, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc."

James was created "Duke of Normandy" by King Louis XIV of France on 31 December 1660.

Honours

*KG: Knight of the Garter, 20 April 1642

Arms

Prior to his accession, James's coat of arms was the royal arms (which he later inherited), differenced by a label of three points Ermine.  His arms as king were: Quarterly, I and IV Grandquarterly, Azure three fleurs-de-lis Or (for France) and Gules three lions passant guardant in pale Or (for England); II Or a lion rampant within a double tressure flory-counter-flory Gules (for Scotland); III Azure a harp Or stringed Argent (for Ireland).

In popular culture

James is a character in the novel The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo. He was portrayed by Josef Moser in the 1921 Austrian silent film The Grinning Face and by Sam De Grasse in the 1928 silent film The Man Who Laughs.

He has also been portrayed by Gibb McLaughlin in the 1926 silent film Nell Gwynne, based on a novel by Joseph Shearing, Lawrence Anderson in the 1934 film Nell Gwyn, Vernon Steele in the 1935 film Captain Blood, based on the novel by Rafael Sabatini, Douglas Matthews in the 1938 BBC TV drama Thank You, Mr. Pepys, Henry Oscar in the 1948 film Bonnie Prince Charlie, John Westbrook in the 1969 BBC TV series The First Churchills, Guy Henry in the 1995 film England, My England, the story of the composer Henry Purcell, and Charlie Creed-Miles in the 2003 BBC TV miniseries Charles II: The Power & the Passion.

The squabbling surrounding James's kingship, the Monmouth Rebellion, the Glorious Revolution, James's abdication, and William of Orange's subsequent accession to the throne are themes in Neal Stephenson's 2003 novel Quicksilver.

Issue

Ancestors Charles II (29 May 1630 – 6 February 1685) was monarch of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

Charles II's father, Charles I, was executed at Whitehall on 30 January 1649, at the climax of the English Civil War. Although the Parliament of Scotland proclaimed Charles II King on 5 February 1649, England entered the period known as the English Interregnum or the English Commonwealth, and the country was a de facto republic, led by Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell defeated Charles II at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651, and Charles fled to mainland Europe. Cromwell became virtual dictator of England, Scotland and Ireland, and Charles spent the next nine years in exile in France, the Dutch Republic, and the Spanish Netherlands.

A political crisis that followed the death of Cromwell in 1658 resulted in the restoration of the monarchy, and Charles was invited to return to Britain. On 29 May 1660, his 30th birthday, he was received in London to public acclaim. After 1660, all legal documents were dated as if he had succeeded his father as king in 1649.

Charles's English parliament enacted laws known as the Clarendon Code, designed to shore up the position of the re-established Church of England. Charles acquiesced to the Clarendon Code even though he favoured a policy of religious tolerance. The major foreign policy issue of his early reign was the Second Anglo-Dutch War. In 1670, he entered into the secret treaty of Dover, an alliance with his first cousin King Louis XIV of France. Louis agreed to aid him in the Third Anglo-Dutch War and pay him a pension, and Charles secretly promised to convert to Catholicism at an unspecified future date. Charles attempted to introduce religious freedom for Catholics and Protestant dissenters with his 1672 Royal Declaration of Indulgence, but the English Parliament forced him to withdraw it. In 1679, Titus Oates's revelations of a supposed "Popish Plot" sparked the Exclusion Crisis when it was revealed that Charles's brother and heir (James, Duke of York) was a Catholic. The crisis saw the birth of the pro-exclusion Whig and anti-exclusion Tory parties. Charles sided with the Tories, and, following the discovery of the Rye House Plot to murder Charles and James in 1683, some Whig leaders were executed or forced into exile. Charles dissolved the English Parliament in 1681, and ruled alone until his death on 6 February 1685. He was received into the Roman Catholic Church on his deathbed.

Charles was popularly known as the Merry Monarch, in reference to both the liveliness and hedonism of his court and the general relief at the return to normality after over a decade of rule by Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans. Charles's wife, Catherine of Braganza, bore no live children, but Charles acknowledged at least twelve illegitimate children by various mistresses. He was succeeded by his brother James.

Early life, civil war, and exile 

Charles was born in St James's Palace on 29 May 1630. His parents were Charles I (who ruled the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland) and Henrietta Maria (the sister of the French king Louis XIII). Charles was their second son and child. Their first son was born about a year before Charles but died within a day. England, Scotland and Ireland were respectively predominantly Anglican, Presbyterian and Roman Catholic. Charles was baptised in the Chapel Royal on 27 June by the Anglican Bishop of London, William Laud, and brought up in the care of the Protestant Countess of Dorset, though his godparents included his maternal uncle and grandmother, Marie de' Medici, both of whom were Catholics.  At birth, Charles automatically became Duke of Cornwall and Duke of Rothesay, along with several other associated titles. At or around his eighth birthday, he was designated Prince of Wales, though he was never formally invested with the Honours of the Principality of Wales.

During the 1640s, when Charles was still young, his father fought Parliamentary and Puritan forces in the English Civil War. Charles accompanied his father during the Battle of Edgehill and, at the age of fourteen, participated in the campaigns of 1645, when he was made titular commander of the English forces in the West Country.  By Spring 1646, his father was losing the war, and Charles left England due to fears for his safety, setting off from Falmouth after staying at Pendennis Castle, going first to the Isles of Scilly, then to Jersey, and finally to France, where his mother was already living in exile and his first cousin, eight-year-old Louis XIV, was king. 

In 1648, during the Second English Civil War, Charles moved to The Hague, where his sister Mary and his brother-in-law William II, Prince of Orange, seemed more likely to provide substantial aid to the royalist cause than the Queen's French relations. However, the royalist fleet that came under Charles's control was not used to any advantage, and did not reach Scotland in time to join up with the royalist Engagers army of the Duke of Hamilton, before it was defeated at the Battle of Preston by the Parliamentarians.

At The Hague, Charles had a brief affair with Lucy Walter, who later falsely claimed that they had secretly married.  Her son, James Crofts (afterwards Duke of Monmouth and Duke of Buccleuch), was one of Charles's many illegitimate children who became prominent in British society.

Charles I surrendered in 1646. He escaped and was recaptured in 1648. Despite his son's diplomatic efforts to save him, Charles I was beheaded in January 1649, and England became a republic. On 5 February, the Covenanter Parliament of Scotland had proclaimed Charles II "King of Great Britain, France and Ireland" at the Mercat Cross, Edinburgh, but refused to allow him to enter Scotland unless he accepted Presbyterianism throughout Britain and Ireland.

 When negotiations stalled, Charles authorised General Montrose to land in the Orkney Islands with a small army to threaten the Scots with invasion, in the hope of forcing an agreement more to his liking. Montrose feared that Charles would accept a compromise, and so chose to invade mainland Scotland anyway. He was captured and executed. Charles reluctantly promised that he would abide by the terms of a treaty agreed between him and the Scots Parliament at Breda, and support the Solemn League and Covenant, which authorised Presbyterian church governance across Britain. Upon his arrival in Scotland on 23 June 1650, he formally agreed to the Covenant; his abandonment of Episcopal church governance, although winning him support in Scotland, left him unpopular in England. Charles himself soon came to despise the "villainy" and "hypocrisy" of the Covenanters. 

On 3 September 1650, the Covenanters were defeated at the Battle of Dunbar by a much smaller force led by Oliver Cromwell. The Scots forces were divided into royalist Engagers and Presbyterian Covenanters, who even fought each other. Disillusioned by the Covenanters, in October Charles attempted to escape from them and rode north to join with an Engager force, an event which became known as "the Start", but within two days the Presbyterians had caught up with and recovered him.  Nevertheless, the Scots remained Charles's best hope of restoration, and he was crowned King of Scotland at Scone Abbey on 1 January 1651. With Cromwell's forces threatening Charles's position in Scotland, it was decided to mount an attack on England. With many of the Scots (including Lord Argyll and other leading Covenanters) refusing to participate, and with few English royalists joining the force as it moved south into England, the invasion ended in defeat at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651, after which Charles eluded capture by hiding in the Royal Oak at Boscobel House. Through six weeks of narrow escapes Charles managed to flee England in disguise, landing in Normandy on 16 October, despite a reward of £1,000 on his head, risk of death for anyone caught helping him and the difficulty in disguising Charles, who, at over 6 ft, was unusually tall. 

Cromwell was appointed Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland, effectively placing the British Isles under military rule. Impoverished, Charles could not obtain sufficient support to mount a serious challenge to Cromwell's government. Despite the Stuart family connections through Henrietta Maria and the Princess of Orange, France and the Dutch Republic allied themselves with Cromwell's government from 1654, forcing Charles to turn for aid to Spain, which at that time ruled the Southern Netherlands. Charles raised a ragtag army from his exiled subjects; this small, underpaid, poorly equipped, and ill-disciplined force formed the nucleus of the post-Restoration army.

Restoration 

After the death of Cromwell in 1658, Charles's chances of regaining the Crown at first seemed slim as Cromwell was succeeded as Lord Protector by his son, Richard. However, the new Lord Protector had no power base in either Parliament or the New Model Army. He was forced to abdicate in 1659 and the Protectorate was abolished. During the civil and military unrest which followed, George Monck, the Governor of Scotland, was concerned that the nation would descend into anarchy. Monck and his army marched into the City of London and forced the Rump Parliament to re-admit members of the Long Parliament excluded in December 1648 during Pride's Purge. The Long Parliament dissolved itself and for the first time in almost 20 years, there was a general election.  The outgoing Parliament defined the electoral qualifications so as to ensure, as they thought, the return of a Presbyterian majority.

The restrictions against royalist candidates and voters were widely ignored, and the elections resulted in a House of Commons which was fairly evenly divided on political grounds between Royalists and Parliamentarians and on religious grounds between Anglicans and Presbyterians. The new so-called Convention Parliament assembled on 25 April 1660, and soon afterwards received news of the Declaration of Breda, in which Charles agreed, amongst other things, to pardon many of his father's enemies. The English Parliament resolved to proclaim Charles king and invite him to return, a message that reached Charles at Breda on 8 May 1660. In Ireland, a convention had been called earlier in the year, and on 14 May it declared for Charles as King.

He set out for England from Scheveningen, arrived in Dover on 25 May 1660 and reached London on 29 May, his 30th birthday. Although Charles and Parliament granted amnesty to Cromwell's supporters in the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, 50 people were specifically excluded. In the end nine of the regicides were executed: they were hanged, drawn and quartered; others were given life imprisonment or simply excluded from office for life. The bodies of Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton, and John Bradshaw were subjected to the indignity of posthumous decapitations.

Charles agreed to the abolition of feudal dues; in return, the English Parliament granted him an annual income to run the government of £1.2 million, generated largely from customs and excise duties. The grant, however, proved to be insufficient for most of Charles's reign. The sum was only an indication of the maximum the King was allowed to withdraw from the Treasury each year; for the most part, the actual revenue was much lower, which led to mounting debts, and further attempts to raise money through poll taxes, land taxes and hearth taxes.

In the later half of 1660, Charles's joy at the Restoration was tempered by the deaths of his youngest brother, Henry, and sister, Mary, of smallpox. At around the same time, Anne Hyde, the daughter of the Lord Chancellor, Edward Hyde, revealed that she was pregnant by Charles's brother, James, whom she had secretly married. Edward Hyde, who had not known of either the marriage or the pregnancy, was created Earl of Clarendon and his position as Charles's favourite minister was strengthened. 

Clarendon Code 

The Convention Parliament was dissolved in December 1660, and, shortly after the coronation, the second English Parliament of the reign assembled. Dubbed the Cavalier Parliament, it was overwhelmingly Royalist and Anglican. It sought to discourage non-conformity to the Church of England, and passed several acts to secure Anglican dominance. The Corporation Act 1661 required municipal officeholders to swear allegiance; the Act of Uniformity 1662 made the use of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer compulsory; the Conventicle Act 1664 prohibited religious assemblies of more than five people, except under the auspices of the Church of England; and the Five Mile Act 1665 prohibited expelled non-conforming clergymen from coming within five miles (8 km) of a parish from which they had been banished. The Conventicle and Five Mile Acts remained in effect for the remainder of Charles's reign. The Acts became known as the "Clarendon Code", after Lord Clarendon, even though he was not directly responsible for them and even spoke against the Five Mile Act.

The Restoration was accompanied by social change. Puritanism lost its momentum. Theatres reopened after having been closed during the protectorship of Oliver Cromwell, and bawdy "Restoration comedy" became a recognisable genre. Theatre licences granted by Charles required that female parts be played by "their natural performers", rather than by boys as was often the practice before; and Restoration literature celebrated or reacted to the restored court, which included libertines like John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester. Of Charles II, Wilmot supposedly said:
We have a pretty witty king,
Whose word no man relies on,
He never said a foolish thing,
And never did a wise one" 
to which Charles supposedly riposted, "That's true, for my words are my own, but my actions are those of my ministers".

Great Plague and Great Fire 

In 1665, Charles was faced with a great health crisis: the Great Plague of London. The death toll reached a peak of 7,000 per week in the week of 17 September. Charles, with his family and court, fled London in July to Salisbury; Parliament met in Oxford. All attempts by London public health officials to contain the disease failed, and the plague spread rapidly.

Adding to London's woes, but marking the end of the plague, was what later became known as the Great Fire of London, which started on 2 September 1666. The fire consumed about 13,200 houses and 87 churches, including St Paul's Cathedral. Charles and his brother James joined and directed the fire-fighting effort. The public blamed Catholic conspirators for the fire,  although it had actually started in a bakehouse in Pudding Lane.

Foreign and colonial policy 

Since 1640, Portugal had been fighting a war against Spain to restore its independence after a dynastic union of sixty years between the crowns of Spain and Portugal. Portugal had been helped by France, but in the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 Portugal was abandoned by its French ally. Negotiations with Portugal for Charles's marriage to Catherine of Braganza began during his father's reign and upon the restoration, Queen Luísa of Portugal, acting as regent, reopened negotiations with England that resulted in an alliance. On 23 June 1661, a marriage treaty was signed, Catherine's dowry securing to England Tangier (in North Africa) and the Seven islands of Bombay (the latter having a major influence on the development of the British Empire in India), together with trading privileges in Brazil and the East Indies, religious and commercial freedom in Portugal and two million Portuguese crowns (about £300,000); while Portugal obtained military and naval support against Spain and liberty of worship for Catherine. Catherine journeyed from Portugal to Portsmouth on 13–14 May 1662, but was not visited by Charles there until 20 May. The next day the couple were married at Portsmouth in two ceremonies – a Catholic one conducted in secret, followed by a public Anglican service.

In an unpopular move, also in 1662, Charles sold Dunkirk to his first cousin King Louis XIV of France for about £375,000. The channel port, although a valuable strategic outpost, was a drain on Charles's limited finances.

Before Charles's restoration, the Navigation Acts of 1650 had hurt Dutch trade by giving English vessels a monopoly, and had started the First Dutch War (1652–1654). To lay foundations for a new beginning, envoys of the States General appeared in November 1660 with the Dutch Gift. The Second Dutch War (1665–1667) was started by English attempts to muscle in on Dutch possessions in Africa and North America. The conflict began well for the English, with the capture of New Amsterdam (renamed New York in honour of Charles's brother James, Duke of York) and a victory at the Battle of Lowestoft, but in 1667 the Dutch launched a surprise attack on the English (the Raid on the Medway) when they sailed up the River Thames to where a major part of the English fleet was docked. Almost all of the ships were sunk except for the flagship, Royal Charles, which was taken back to the Netherlands as a trophy. The Second Dutch War ended with the signing of the Treaty of Breda.

As a result of the Second Dutch War, Charles dismissed Lord Clarendon, whom he used as a scapegoat for the war. Clarendon fled to France when impeached for high treason (which carried the penalty of death). Power passed to five politicians known collectively by a whimsical acronym as the Cabal—Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley (afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury) and Lauderdale. In fact, the Cabal rarely acted in concert, and the court was often divided between two factions led by Arlington and Buckingham, with Arlington the more successful. 

In 1668, England allied itself with Sweden, and with its former enemy the Netherlands, to oppose Louis XIV in the War of Devolution. Louis made peace with the Triple Alliance, but he continued to maintain his aggressive intentions towards the Netherlands. In 1670, Charles, seeking to solve his financial troubles, agreed to the Treaty of Dover, under which Louis XIV would pay him £160,000 each year. In exchange, Charles agreed to supply Louis with troops and to announce his conversion to Catholicism "as soon as the welfare of his kingdom will permit". Louis was to provide him with 6,000 troops to suppress those who opposed the conversion. Charles endeavoured to ensure that the Treaty—especially the conversion clause—remained secret.  It remains unclear if Charles ever seriously intended to convert. 

Meanwhile, by a series of five charters, Charles granted the East India Company the rights to autonomous government of its territorial acquisitions, to mint money, to command fortresses and troops, to form alliances, to make war and peace, and to exercise both civil and criminal jurisdiction over the its possessions in the Indies. Earlier in 1668 he leased the islands of Bombay for a nominal sum of £10 paid in gold. The Portuguese territories that Catherine brought with her as a dowry proved too expensive to maintain; Tangier was abandoned in 1684. In 1670, Charles granted control of the entire Hudson Bay drainage basin to the Hudson's Bay Company by royal charter, and named the territory Rupert's Land, after his cousin Prince Rupert of the Rhine, the company's first Governor. 

Conflict with Parliament 

Although previously favourable to the Crown, the Cavalier Parliament was alienated by the king's wars and religious policies during the 1670s. In 1672, Charles issued the Royal Declaration of Indulgence, in which he purported to suspend all penal laws against Catholics and other religious dissenters. In the same year, he openly supported Catholic France and started the Third Anglo-Dutch War. 

The Cavalier Parliament opposed the Declaration of Indulgence on constitutional grounds by claiming that the King had no right to arbitrarily suspend laws passed by Parliament. Charles withdrew the Declaration, and also agreed to the Test Act, which not only required public officials to receive the sacrament under the forms prescribed by the Church of England, but also later forced them to denounce certain teachings of the Catholic Church as "superstitious and idolatrous". Clifford, who had converted to Catholicism, resigned rather than take the oath, and committed suicide shortly after. By 1674 England had gained nothing from the Anglo-Dutch War, and the Cavalier Parliament refused to provide further funds, forcing Charles to make peace. The power of the Cabal waned and that of Clifford's replacement, Lord Danby, grew.

Charles's wife Queen Catherine was unable to produce an heir; her four pregnancies had ended in miscarriages and stillbirths in 1662, February 1666, May 1668 and June 1669. Charles's heir presumptive was therefore his unpopular Catholic brother, James, Duke of York. Partly to assuage public fears that the royal family was too Catholic, Charles agreed that James's daughter, Mary, should marry the Protestant William of Orange.  In 1678, Titus Oates, who had been alternately an Anglican and Jesuit priest, falsely warned of a "Popish Plot" to assassinate the King, even accusing the Queen of complicity. Charles did not believe the allegations, but ordered his chief minister Lord Danby to investigate. While Lord Danby seems to have been rightly sceptical about Oates's claims, the Cavalier Parliament took them seriously. The people were seized with an anti-Catholic hysteria; judges and juries across the land condemned the supposed conspirators; numerous innocent individuals were executed.

Later in 1678, Lord Danby was impeached by the House of Commons on the charge of high treason. Although much of the nation had sought war with Catholic France, Charles had secretly negotiated with Louis XIV, trying to reach an agreement under which England would remain neutral in return for money. Lord Danby had publicly professed that he was hostile to France, but had reservedly agreed to abide by Charles's wishes. Unfortunately for him, the House of Commons failed to view him as a reluctant participant in the scandal, instead believing that he was the author of the policy. To save Lord Danby from the impeachment trial, Charles dissolved the Cavalier Parliament in January 1679.

The new English Parliament, which met in March of the same year, was quite hostile to Charles. Many members feared that he had intended to use the standing army to suppress dissent or impose Catholicism. However, with insufficient funds voted by Parliament, Charles was forced to gradually disband his troops. Having lost the support of Parliament, Lord Danby resigned his post of Lord High Treasurer, but received a pardon from the King. In defiance of the royal will, the House of Commons declared that the dissolution of Parliament did not interrupt impeachment proceedings, and that the pardon was therefore invalid. When the House of Lords attempted to impose the punishment of exile—which the Commons thought too mild—the impeachment became stalled between the two Houses. As he had been required to do so many times during his reign, Charles bowed to the wishes of his opponents, committing Lord Danby to the Tower of London. Lord Danby would be held there for another five years. 

Later years 

Charles faced a political storm over the succession to the Throne. The prospect of a Catholic monarch was vehemently opposed by Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury (previously Baron Ashley and a member of the Cabal, which had fallen apart in 1673). Shaftesbury's power base was strengthened when the House of Commons of 1679 introduced the Exclusion Bill, which sought to exclude the Duke of York from the line of succession. Some even sought to confer the Crown to the Protestant Duke of Monmouth, the eldest of Charles's illegitimate children. The Abhorrers—those who thought the Exclusion Bill was abhorrent—were named Tories (after a term for dispossessed Irish Catholic bandits), while the Petitioners—those who supported a petitioning campaign in favour of the Exclusion Bill—were called Whigs (after a term for rebellious Scottish Presbyterians). 

Fearing that the Exclusion Bill would be passed, and bolstered by some acquittals in the continuing Plot trials, which seemed to him to indicate a more favourable public mood towards Catholicism, Charles dissolved the English Parliament, for a second time that year, in the summer of 1679. Charles's hopes for a more moderate Parliament were not fulfilled, within a few months he had dissolved Parliament yet again, after it sought to pass the Exclusion Bill. When a new Parliament assembled at Oxford in March 1681, Charles dissolved it for a fourth time after just a few days.  During the 1680s, however, popular support for the Exclusion Bill ebbed, and Charles experienced a nationwide surge of loyalty. Lord Shaftesbury was prosecuted (albeit unsuccessfully) for treason in 1681 and later fled to Holland, where he died. For the remainder of his reign, Charles ruled without Parliament.

Charles's opposition to the Exclusion Bill angered some Protestants. Protestant conspirators formulated the Rye House Plot, a plan to murder the King and the Duke of York as they returned to London after horse races in Newmarket. A great fire, however, destroyed Charles's lodgings at Newmarket, which forced him to leave the races early, thus, inadvertently, avoiding the planned attack. News of the failed plot was leaked. Protestant politicians such as Arthur Capell, 1st Earl of Essex, Algernon Sydney, Lord William Russell and the Duke of Monmouth were implicated in the plot. Lord Essex slit his own throat while imprisoned in the Tower of London; Sydney and Russell were executed for high treason on very flimsy evidence; and the Duke of Monmouth went into exile at the court of William of Orange. Lord Danby and the surviving Catholic lords held in the Tower were released and the King's Catholic brother, James, acquired greater influence at court.  Titus Oates was convicted and imprisoned for defamation.

Death 

Charles suffered a sudden apoplectic fit on the morning of 2 February 1685, and died aged 54 at 11:45 am four days later at Whitehall Palace.  The suddenness of his illness and death led to suspicion of poison in the minds of many, including one of the royal doctors; however, a more modern medical analysis has held that the symptoms of his final illness are similar to those of uraemia (a clinical syndrome due to kidney dysfunction).  In the days between his collapse and his death, Charles endured a variety of torturous treatments including bloodletting, purging and cupping in hopes of effecting a recovery. 

On his deathbed Charles asked his brother, James, to look after his mistresses: "be well to Portsmouth, and let not poor Nelly starve", and told his courtiers: "I am sorry, gentlemen, for being such a time a-dying". On the last evening of his life he was received into the Catholic Church, though the extent to which he was fully conscious or committed, and with whom the idea originated, is unclear. He was buried in Westminster Abbey "without any manner of pomp" on 14 February.

Charles was succeeded by his brother, who became James II of England and Ireland and James VII of Scotland.

Posterity and legacy 

Charles had no legitimate children, but acknowledged a dozen by seven mistresses, including five by the notorious Barbara Villiers, Lady Castlemaine, for whom the Dukedom of Cleveland was created. His other mistresses included Moll Davis, Nell Gwyn, Elizabeth Killigrew, Catherine Pegge, Lucy Walter, and Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth. As a result, in his lifetime he was often nicknamed "Old Rowley", the name of one of his horses which was notable at the time as a stallion.

His subjects resented paying taxes that were spent on his mistresses and their children, many of whom received dukedoms or earldoms. The present Dukes of Buccleuch, Richmond, Grafton and St Albans descend from Charles in unbroken male line. Diana, Princess of Wales, was descended from two of Charles's illegitimate sons: the Dukes of Grafton and Richmond. Diana's son, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, second in line to the British throne, is likely to be the first British monarch descended from Charles II.

Charles's eldest son, the Duke of Monmouth, led a rebellion against James II, but was defeated at the Battle of Sedgemoor on 6 July 1685, captured and executed. James was eventually dethroned in 1688, in the course of the Glorious Revolution. He was the last Catholic monarch to rule Britain.

Looking back on Charles's reign, Tories tended to view it as a time of benevolent monarchy whereas Whigs perceived it as a terrible despotism. Today it is possible to assess him without the taint of partisanship, and he is seen as more of a lovable rogue—in the words of his contemporary John Evelyn, "a prince of many virtues and many great imperfections, debonair, easy of access, not bloody or cruel". John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, wrote more lewdly of Charles:

Charles, a patron of the arts and sciences, founded the Royal Observatory and supported the Royal Society, a scientific group whose early members included Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle and Sir Isaac Newton. He was the personal patron of Sir Christopher Wren, the architect who helped rebuild London after the Great Fire and who constructed the Royal Hospital Chelsea, which Charles founded as a home for retired soldiers in 1682.

The anniversary of the Restoration (which was also Charles's birthday)—29 May—was recognised in England until the mid-nineteenth century as Oak Apple Day, after the Royal Oak in which Charles hid during his escape from the forces of Oliver Cromwell. Traditional celebrations involved the wearing of oak leaves but these have now died out. Charles II is commemorated by statues in London's Soho Square, in Edinburgh's Parliament Square, in Three Cocks Lane in Gloucester, and near the south portal of Lichfield Cathedral, and is depicted extensively in literature and other media. Charleston, South Carolina, and South Kingstown, Rhode Island, are named after him.

Titles, styles, honours and arms 

Titles and styles 

* 29 May 1630 – May 1638: The Duke of Cornwall
* May 1638 – 30 January 1649: The Prince of Wales
* 30 January 1649 – 6 February 1685: His Majesty The King

The official style of Charles II was "Charles the Second, by the Grace of God, King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc."  The claim to France was only nominal, and had been asserted by every English monarch since Edward III, regardless of the amount of French territory actually controlled.

Honours 

* KG: Knight of the Garter, 21 May 1638

Arms 

As Prince of Wales, Charles's coat of arms was the royal arms (which he later inherited), differenced by a label of three points Argent. His arms as monarch were: Quarterly, I and IV Grandquarterly, Azure three fleurs-de-lis Or (for France) and Gules three lions passant guardant in pale Or (for England); II Or a lion rampant within a double tressure flory-counter-flory Gules (for Scotland); III Azure a harp Or stringed Argent (for Ireland).

Issue 

By Marguerite or Margaret de Carteret
# Letters claiming that she bore Charles a son named James de la Cloche in 1646 are dismissed by historians as forgeries. 
By Lucy Walter (c. 1630 – 1658)
# James Crofts, later Scott (1649–1685), created Duke of Monmouth (1663) in England and Duke of Buccleuch (1663) in Scotland. Ancestor of Sarah, Duchess of York. Monmouth was born nine months after Walter and Charles II first met, and was acknowledged as his son by Charles II, but James II suggested that he was the son of another of her lovers, Colonel Robert Sidney, rather than Charles. Lucy Walter had a daughter, Mary Crofts, born after James in 1651, but Charles II was not the father, since he and Walter parted in September 1649.
By Elizabeth Killigrew (1622–1680), daughter of Sir Robert Killigrew, married Francis Boyle, 1st Viscount Shannon, in 1660
# Charlotte Jemima Henrietta Maria FitzRoy (1650–1684), married firstly James Howard and secondly William Paston, 2nd Earl of Yarmouth
By Catherine Pegge
# Charles FitzCharles (1657–1680), known as "Don Carlo", created Earl of Plymouth (1675)
# Catherine FitzCharles (born 1658; she either died young or became a nun at Dunkirk)
By Barbara née Villiers (1641–1709), wife of Roger Palmer, 1st Earl of Castlemaine; created Duchess of Cleveland in her own right
# Lady Anne Palmer (Fitzroy) (1661–1722), married Thomas Lennard, 1st Earl of Sussex. She may have been the daughter of Roger Palmer, but Charles accepted her. Sarah, Duchess of York, descends from Anne by both parents.
# Charles Fitzroy (1662–1730), created Duke of Southampton (1675), became 2nd Duke of Cleveland (1709)
# Henry Fitzroy (1663–1690), created Earl of Euston (1672), Duke of Grafton (1675), also 7-greats-grandfather of Diana, Princess of Wales
# Charlotte Fitzroy (1664–1717), married Edward Lee, 1st Earl of Lichfield
# George Fitzroy (1665–1716), created Earl of Northumberland (1674), Duke of Northumberland (1678)
# Barbara (Benedicta) Fitzroy (1672–1737) – She was probably the child of John Churchill, later Duke of Marlborough, who was another of Cleveland's many lovers, and was never acknowledged by Charles as his own daughter.
By Nell Gwyn (1650–1687)
# Charles Beauclerk (1670–1726), created Duke of St Albans (1684)
# James, Lord Beauclerk (1671–1680)
By Louise Renée de Penancoet de Kérouaille (1649–1734), created Duchess of Portsmouth in her own right (1673)
# Charles Lennox (1672–1723), created Duke of Richmond (1675) in England and Duke of Lennox (1675) in Scotland. Ancestor of Diana, Princess of Wales; Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall; and Sarah, Duchess of York.
By Mary 'Moll' Davis, courtesan and actress of repute
# Lady Mary Tudor (1673–1726), married Edward Radclyffe, 2nd Earl of Derwentwater; after Edward's death, she married Henry Graham, and upon his death she married James Rooke.
Other probable mistresses:
# Christabella Wyndham 
# Hortense Mancini, Duchess of Mazarin 
# Winifred Wells – one of the Queen's Maids of Honour 
# Jane Roberts – the daughter of a clergyman
# Mrs Knight – a famous singer 
# Elizabeth Berkeley, née Bagot, Dowager Countess of Falmouth – the widow of Charles Berkeley, 1st Earl of Falmouth
# Elizabeth Fitzgerald, Countess of Kildare

Ancestry 

Notes
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