History UsefulNotes / JamesII

To show how terrible a King he was, compare him to his father and brother; it took Charles I ''almost twenty four years'' to squander it all and lose his head and his brother, Charles ruled peacefully for twenty three years. It took James ''three'' years to bugger it all up.

He squandered it all within 3 years.

!!Tropes
* WarriorPrince - James was a proven soldier in his exile during the UsefulNotes/OliverCromwell years. He also became an accomplished naval officer during the Restoration.

He had converted to Catholicism and was bent on returning Britain to its loyalty to Rome. However, 150 years after the Reformation and 120 after the Elizabethan Settlement, the British people weren’t about to do that. They might have grudgingly tolerated his Catholicism as a blip and an aberration given that his heirs were staunchly Protestant, but there was one problem: they were his ''daughters'', and under the male-preference primogeniture succession practiced at the time, any son would displace them and become the Heir Apparent. The birth of that son, James Francis Edward, in 1688 caused a panic within government. Then seven leading statesmen had an idea...

They invited the king's Protestant son-in-law William of Orange (married to James' Protestant daughter Mary, the previous Heiress Presumptive, and an heir to the throne in his own right as a grandson of UsefulNotes/CharlesI) to invade England and save them from the Catholic tyrant. James fled to France where he died as a pensionary of his cousin UsefulNotes/LouisXIV.

James' scions would try to win back the throne in what became known as the UsefulNotes/HanoverStuartWars to no avail. With the death of his childless grandsons Charles Edward ("Bonnie Prince Charlie") and Henry ([[TakingTheVeil who had become a Cardinal]]), the male Catholic Stuart line ended. All Jacobite "claimants" to the throne since 1807 descend from James' younger sister Henrietta, though none of them ever publicly exercised this claim.[[note]]The current claimant is Franz, Duke of Bavaria - who is also the pretender to the former Kingdom of Bavaria - who "does not comment on issues concerning his familiar [''sic''] relationship to the Royal House of Stuart."[[/note]]

Today James gets a bad rap for his absolutist politics and lack of political finesse, not to mention centuries of extra tarnish thrown on by his Protestant enemies and 19th-century Whig historians. However, we should take pains to note that one of the proximate causes of James' overthrow was the letter of the Seven Bishops, a response to the Declaration of Indulgence, which aimed towards religious ''toleration'' for both Catholics and Protestant Dissenters (basically, total freedom of religion for Christians, which was more than you could get in most of Europe at the time). The people who brought in the Dutch in were mainstream Anglicans, many of whom wanted a return to the restrictions on civil liberties for non-Anglicans, and all of whom (correctly or incorrectly is itself a controversial debate) saw James' policies of tolerance as being aimed at making England (and Scotland) officially Catholic.

Today James gets a bad rap for his absolutist politics and lack of political finesse, not to mention centuries of extra tarnish thrown on by his Protestant enemies and 19th-century Whig historians. However, we should take pains to note that one of the proximate causes of James' overthrow was the letter of the Seven Bishops, a response to the Declaration of Indulgence, which aimed towards religious ''toleration'' for both Catholics and Protestant Dissenters (basically, total freedom of religion for Christians, which was more than you could get in most of Europe at the time). The people who brought in the Dutch in were mainstream Anglicans, many of whom wanted a return to the restrictions on civil liberties for non-Anglicans, and all of whom (correctly or incorrectly is [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment a debate we will not have]]) saw James' policies of tolerance as being aimed at making England (and Scotland) officially Catholic.

He had converted to Catholicism and was bent on returning Britain to its loyalty to Rome. His people might have grudgingly tolerated his Catholicism as a blip and an aberration given that his heirs were staunchly Protestant, but there was one problem: they were his ''daughters'', and under the male-preference primogeniture succession practiced at the time, any son would displace them and become the Heir Apparent. The birth of that son, James Francis Edward, in 1688 caused a panic within government. Then seven leading statesmen had an idea...

James' scions would try to win back the throne in what became known as the UsefulNotes/HanoverStuartWars to no avail. With the death of his childless grandsons Charles Edward ("Bonnie Prince Charlie") and Henry ([[TakingTheVeil who had become a Cardinal]]), the male Catholic Stuart line ended. All Jacobite "claimants" to the throne since 1807 descend from James' younger sister Henrietta, though none of them ever publicly exercised this claim.[[note]]The current claimant is Franz, Duke of Bavaria - also a member of the deposed Bavarian royal family - who "does not comment on issues concerning his familiar [''sic''] relationship to the Royal House of Stuart."[[/note]]

Today James gets a bad rap for his absolutist politics and lack of political finesse, not to mention centuries of extra tarnish thrown on by his Protestant enemies and 19th-century Whig historians. However, we should take pains to note that one of the proximate causes of James' overthrow was the letter of the Seven Bishops, a response to the Declaration of Indulgence, which aimed towards religious ''toleration'' for both Catholics and Protestant Dissenters (basically, total freedom of religion for Christians, which was more than you could get in most of Europe at the time). The people who brought in the Dutch in were mainstream Anglicans, many of whom wanted a return to the restrictions on civil liberties for non-Anglicans, and all of whom (correctly or incorrectly is [[RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgement a debate we will not have]]) saw James' policies of tolerance as being aimed at making England (and Scotland) officially Catholic.

James' scions would try to win back the throne in what became known as the UsefulNotes/HanoverStuartWars to no avail. With the death of his childless grandsons Charles Edward ("Bonnie Prince Charlie") and Henry ([[TakingTheVeil who had become a Cardinal]]), the male Catholic Stuart line ended.

* TheExile: Twice
** NobleFugitive
** YouCantGoHomeAgain
* JerkAss

James' scions would try to win back the throne in what became known as the HanoverStuartWars to no avail. With the death of his childless grandsons Charles Edward ("Bonnie Prince Charlie") and Henry ([[TakingTheVeil who had become a Cardinal]]), the male Catholic Stuart line ended.

UsefulNotes/JamesII of Great Britain was the brother of UsefulNotes/CharlesII and succeeded him in 1685. He came to the throne with widespread public sympathy and a Royalist parliament.

They invited the king's Protestant son-in-law William of Orange (married to James' Protestant daughter Mary, the previous Heiress Presumptive, and an heir to the throne in his own right as a grandson of CharlesTheFirst) to invade England and save them from the Catholic tyrant. James fled to France where he died as a pensionary of his cousin UsefulNotes/LouisXIV.

He had converted to Catholicism and was bent on returning Britain to its loyalty to Rome. The birth of his son James Edward caused a panic within government. Then seven leading statesmen had an idea...

They invited the king's Protestant son-in-law William of Orange (married James' Protestant daughter Mary) to invade England and save them from the Catholic tyrant. James fled to France where he died as a pensionary of his cousin UsefulNotes/LouisXIV.

James' scions would try to win back the throne in what became known as the HanoverStuartWars to no avail. With the death of his childless grandsons Charles Edward ("Bonnie Prince Charlie") and Henry ([[TakingTheVeil became a Cardinal]]), the male Catholic Stuart line ended.