1685
The accession of the last Catholic ruler of the United Kingdom.
James II of England (James VII of Scotland) (1633-1701) was born to King Charles I and his queen Henrietta Maria. He was captured by the forces of Parliament during the English civil war but escaped and fled to France where he joined his mother at the court of his uncle Louis XIV. Parliament had executed his father in 1649 which made his older brother Charles, the king of a throne he could not recover until 1660 and James became the heir presumptive — meaning that he would be displaced as heir as soon as his brother produced a child. However Charles II, though capable of siring any number of bastard sons and daughters (at least 14), remained in a childless marriage.
Though both had been brought up as Protestants (and the ruler of England was expected to be head of the Anglican church), both Charles and James converted to their mother’s Catholicism. While Charles concealed his conversion as long as he lived, James made no secret of it after 1679. This led many in England to call for his being barred from the throne but when his brother died in 1685, on this day James succeeded as king with little public opposition.
Within three years, however, James would be deposed from the throne in a Protestant coup. There were three main reasons for this: James’s attempts to win toleration for his Catholic subjects, his use of non-Parliamentary powers to do so, and the astonishing birth of a male son who would be the Catholic heir which the English political class dreaded. In 1688 politicians conspired with Mary, the daughter of James II and her husband, William of Orange, the Dutch prince. An Orange-led army invaded England causing James to flee; he returned with an army to invade Catholic Ireland where he hoped to build a base of support but he was defeated in 1689 at the Battle of the Boyne. James then went into permanent exile in France; by his flight he was deemed to have abdicated and William and Mary were installed as joint rulers.
The consequences of this “Glorious Revolution” were enormous. The two new monarchs had to accept a Bill of Rights and new laws that would result eventually in the supremacy of Parliament. Catholics were (and still are) barred from the throne but further religious toleration was granted to non-Anglican Protestants. James, his son (the Old Pretender) and grandson (Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender) kept up their claims to the throne, often backed by armed invasions. It was not until 1807 that the last Stuart claimant, a Catholic cardinal named Henry Benedict Thomas Edward Maria Clement Francis Xavier Stuart died.