King James II of England

“ JAMES II. (1633–1701) , king of Great Britain and Ireland, second surviving son of Charles I. and Henrietta Maria, was born at St James’s on the 15th of October 1633, and created duke of York in January 1643. During the Civil War James was taken prisoner by Fairfax (1646) , but contrived to escape to Holland in 1648. Subsequently he served in the French army under Turenne, and in the Spanish under Condé, and was applauded by both commanders for his brilliant personal courage. Returning to England with Charles II. in 1660 he was appointed lord high admiral and warden of the Cinque Ports. ”

“ Fifth to manhood at last secured rest for the land. James had all the varied ability of his race, and he carried out with vigour its traditional policy. The Highland chieftains, the great lords of the Lowlands, were brought more under the royal sway; the Church was strengthened to serve as a check on the feudal baronage; the alliance with France was strictly preserved, as the one security against English aggression. Nephew as he was indeed of the English king, James from the outset of his reign took up an attitude hostile to England. ”

“ Accession of James to the English crown.
It was only about two years after Charles's birth that Queen Elizabeth died, and King James succeeded to the English throne. A messenger came with all speed to Scotland to announce the fact. He rode night and day. He arrived at the king's palace in the night. He gained admission to the king's chamber, and, kneeling at his bedside, proclaimed him King of England. James immediately prepared to bid his Scotch subjects farewell, and to proceed to England to take possession of his new realm. ”

“ But the secrecy in which his political action had as yet been shrouded and his long absence from England had hindered any general knowledge of his designs. His first words on his accession, his promise to "preserve this Government both in Church and State as it is now by law established," were welcomed by the whole country with enthusiasm. All the suspicions of a Catholic sovereign seemed to have disappeared. "We have the word of a King!" ran the general cry, "and of a King who was never worse than his word." The conviction of his brother's faithlessness in fact stood James in good stead. ”

“ However desirous the Most Christian King might be to uphold the cause of hereditary monarchy and of pure religion all over the world, his first duty was to his own kingdom; and, unless a counterrevolution speedily took place in England, his duty to his own kingdom might impose on him the painful necessity of treating with the Prince of Orange. It would therefore be wise in James to do without delay whatever he could honourably and conscientiously do to win back the hearts of his people. ”

“ The King of Scots, he trusted, would be too wise to condescend to such purposes; 'but because his realm adjoined unto England, and as a prince and king on whose peril they had not much regard,' the Pope and cardinals 'designed to make him a ringleader and chief setter forth of hostility against his uncle, not caring whether both uncle and nephew should consume each other,' so they might have their way. Let James consider whether the conduct of England towards him for the last twenty years deserved that he should lend himself to its enemies. ”

“ Every body knew how King James had observed his Coronation oath; and every body might guess how he would observe his Declaration. While grave men reasoned thus, the Whig jesters were not sparing of their pasquinades. Some of the Noncompounders, meantime, uttered indignant murmurs. The King was in bad hands, in the hands of men who hated monarchy. His mercy was cruelty of the worst sort. The general pardon which he had granted to his enemies was in truth a general proscription of his friends. ”

“ The Catholics took the opportunity of exhorting James to make an alliance with the king of Spain, to lay immediate claim to the crown of England, and to prevent the ruin which, from his mother’s example, he might conclude would certainly, if Elizabeth’s power prevailed, overwhelm his person and his kingdom. The queen was sensible of the danger attending these counsels; and after allowing James some decent interval to vent his grief and anger, she employed her emissaries to pacify him, and to set before him every motive of hope or fear which might induce him to live in amity with her. ”

“ From the time that he became king of England, James was delivered from the bondage which from his infancy the kirk had strenuously endeavoured to impose on him, and he now resolved to make the most of his liberty. His chief aim now was to assimilate the church of Scotland to that of England, and especially to annihilate the pretensions of the ministers to dictate to the nation in regard to civil matters. In carrying out this policy the king, when dealing with the kirk, mainly made use of Spottiswood, and Spottiswood performed his difficult duties with great discretion. ”

“ The journey of the young prince was, meantime, retarded by the reluctance of the King. James justly considered that continental nations might impugn his natural affection, as well as his judgment, in permitting the heir-apparent to quit the kingdom, and to leave his royal father childless, for Elizabeth of Bohemia had taken refuge in the Dutch states, and had not then looked to England as her exile. He considered the danger, writes a contemporary historian, “himself being now aged, if he should die, what then might befall his children.” ”

“ In these fatal follies the King was artfully encouraged by a minister who had been an Exclusionist, and who still called himself a Protestant, the Earl of Sunderland. The motives and conduct of this unprincipled politician have often been misrepresented. He was, in his own lifetime, accused by the Jacobites of having, even before the beginning of the reign of James, determined to bring about a revolution in favour of the Prince of Orange, and of having, with that view, recommended a succession of outrages on the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the realm. ”

“ James was, of course, so long as the queen, Charles's lawful wife, had no children, the next heir to the crown. He spent most of his life in the court of his brother, and they were generally very warm friends to each other. On one of Charles's frolicking excursions, when he was away far from his palace, without any suitable attendants or guards, James told him that he really thought his life was not safe in such exposures. Charles replied by telling James not to give himself any uneasiness. "You may depend upon it," said he, "that nobody will ever think of killing me to make you king." ”

“ Had James IV. lived he would doubtless have continued, firm-handed as he was, to hold in check both churchmen and nobles, and the reforms which were in the air might have taken effect like leaven, and not, as they did, like gunpowder. They might have been grafted upon the existing stem, as in England, instead of overturning it. But during the long minority of James V. the abuses of the feudal system, political and ecclesiastical, attained too rank a growth to be pruned by the hand of that king when he came of age, notwithstanding his energy and good intentions. ”

“ The King wished to put these regiments under the command of Roman Catholic officers. The Prince resolutely opposed this design. The King had recourse to his favourite commonplaces about toleration. The Prince replied that he only followed his Majesty's example. It was notorious that loyal and able men had been turned out of office in England merely for being Protestants. It was then surely competent to the Stadtholder and the States General to withhold high public trusts from Papists. This answer provoked James to such a degree that, in his rage, he lost sight of veracity and common sense. ”

“ No reliance could be placed on their principles but much reliance might be placed on their hopes and on their fears; and of the two Kings who laid claim to the English crown, the King from whom there was most to hope and most to fear was the King in possession. If therefore William had little reason to esteem these politicians his hearty friends, he had still less reason to number them among his hearty foes. Their conduct towards him, reprehensible as it was, might be called upright when compared with their conduct towards James. ”

“ In the meantime the King would be an object of aversion and suspicion to his people. England would still be, as she had been under James the First, under Charles the First, and under Charles the Second, a power of the third rank; and France would domineer unchecked beyond the Alps and the Rhine. On the other hand, it was probable that James, by acting with prudence and moderation, by strictly observing the laws and by exerting himself to win the confidence of his Parliament, might be able to obtain, for the professors of his religion, a large measure of relief. ”

“ Though neither the nature and extent of his connection with France, nor his design of introducing popery into England, were known at that time as they now are, yet there were not wanting many indications of the king’s disposition, and of the general tendency of his designs. Reasonable persons apprehended that the supplies asked were intended to be used, not for the specious purpose of maintaining the balance of Europe, but for that of subduing the parliament and people who should give them ”

“ Aspirants for power again tormented the people with the evils of war. King James II. died in France, September, 1701. He had been shielded by Louis after his flight from his throne to France, and now the French monarch acknowledged James' son, James Francis Edward (known in history as the pretender) to be the lawful king of England. This act greatly offended the English, because the crown had been settled upon Anne, James' second Protestant daughter. ”

“ It is impossible to justify Elizabeth's conduct towards James in his own kingdom. What is best to be said for it is, that his indiscretion, his suspicious intrigues at Rome and Madrid, the dangerous influence of his favourites, and the evident purpose of the court of Spain to make him its tool, rendered it necessary to keep a very strict watch over his proceedings. If she excited the peers and presbyters of Scotland against their king, he was not behind her in some of the last years of her reign. ”

“ Their object was to be safe in every event. They therefore openly took the oath of allegiance to one King, and secretly plighted their word to the other. They were indefatigable in obtaining commissions, patents of peerage, pensions, grants of crown land, under the great seal of William; and they had in their secret drawers promises of pardon in the handwriting of James.
Among those who were guilty of this wickedness three men stand preeminent, Russell, Godolphin and Marlborough. No three men could be, in head and heart, more unlike to one another ”

“ They were now forbidden to wear black; and they submitted; but it was beyond the power of the great King to prevent his highbred and sharpwitted courtiers from whispering to each other that there was something pitiful in this revenge taken by the living on the dead, by a parent on a child. [560]
The hopes of James and of his companions in exile were now higher than they had been since the day of La Hogue. Indeed the general opinion of politicians, both here and on the Continent, was that William would find it impossible to sustain himself much longer on the throne. ”

“ It was a sacred duty, Tyrconnel said, to avert the calamities which seemed to be impending. King James himself, if he understood the whole case, would not wish his Irish friends to engage at that moment in an enterprise which must be fatal to them and useless to him. He would permit them, he would command them, to submit to necessity, and to reserve themselves for better times. If any man of weight, loyal, able, and well informed, would repair to Saint Germains and explain the state of things, his Majesty would easily be convinced. ”

“ On 19 June 1587 James reached the age of twenty-one. He celebrated the event by an attempt to reconcile the feuds between the nobility by making the bitterest enemies walk through the streets of Edinburgh hand in hand. In July the estates passed an act revoking all grants made to the injury of the crown during the king's nonage.
In 1588 the approach of the Spanish Armada threw Scotland as well as England into consternation. In opposition to the Earl of Huntly in the north and to Lord Maxwell on the western borders, James took his stand against Spain. ”

“ He was first sent by that pope as nuncio to Scotland in 1488, to compose the dissensions between James III and his nobles; but as King James was killed before his arrival, he was recalled. He had, however, reached England, and was very well received by Henry VII, who, by the advice of Archbishop (afterwards Cardinal) Morton, employed him as his agent at Rome on his return. It was apparently next year that he came back to England as collector of the papal tribute called Peter pence. He had also been appointed by Innocent one of the seven papal prothonotaries. ”

“ Every such man, when he swears to be faithful and to bear true allegiance to King William, does, by necessary implication, abjure King James. There may doubtless be among the servants of the State, and even among the ministers of the Church, some persons who have no sense of honour or religion, and who are ready to forswear themselves for lucre. ”