James VII and II 1633-1701
King of Scotland as James VII, and then of England and Ireland as James II

The second son of Charles I, and brother of Charles II, he was born at St James's Palace, London, and was created Duke of York. Nine months before his father's execution in 1649 he escaped to the Netherlands, served under the Vicomte de Turenne (1652-55), and in 1657 took Spanish service in Flanders. At the Restoration (1660) James was made Lord High Admiral of England, twice commanding the English fleet in the Dutch wars. In 1659 he had entered into a private marriage contract with Anne Hyde, daughter of the Earl of Clarendon and a professed Catholic, and the year after her death in 1671, he himself became a convert to Catholicism. In 1673 parliament passed the Test Act, and he was obliged to resign the office of Lord High Admiral. Shortly after, he married Mary of Modena, daughter of the Duke of Modena. The national unrest caused by the Popish Plot (1678) became so formidable that he had to retire to the Continent, and during his absence an attempt was made to exclude him from the succession. He returned at the close of 1679, and was sent to Scotland to manage its affairs. This period saw the beginnings of a remarkable cultural renaissance under his patronage. Meanwhile the Exclusion Bill was twice passed by the Commons, but in the first instance it was rejected by the Lords, and on the second was lost by the dissolution of parliament. After defeat of the bill the exiled James returned to England, and in direct violation of the law took his seat in the council, and resumed the direction of naval affairs. When Charles II died in 1685 James ascended the throne, and immediately proceeded to levy, on his own warrant, the customs and excise duties which had been granted to Charles only for life. He sent a mission to Rome, heard mass in public, and became, like his brother, the pensioner of the French king. In Scotland, parliament remained loyal, despite renewed persecution of the Covenanters, but in England the futile rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth was followed by the 'Bloody Assizes'. The suspension of the Test Act by the king's authority, his prosecution of the Seven Bishops on a charge of seditious libel, his conferring ecclesiastical benefices on Roman Catholics, his violation of the rights of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, his plan for packing parliament, and numerous other arbitrary acts showed his fixed determination to overthrow the constitution and the Church. The indignation of the people was at length roused, and the interposition of William, Prince of Orange, James's son-in-law and nephew (the future William III), was formally solicited by seven leading politicians. William landed at Torbay, 4 November 1688, with a powerful army, and marched towards London. He was hailed as a deliverer, while James was deserted not only by his ministers and troops, but even by his daughter the Princess Anne (later Queen Anne). At the first sign of danger, James had sent his wife and infant son to France, and, after one futile start and his arrest at Faversham, he also escaped and joined them at St Germain. He was hospitably received by Louis XIV, who settled a pension on him. In 1689, aided by a small body of French troops, he invaded Ireland and made an unsuccessful attempt to regain his throne. He was defeated at the Battle of the Boyne (1690), and returned to St Germain, where he resided until his death. He left two daughters - Mary II, married to William III, and Anne, afterwards queen - and one son by his second wife, James Francis Edward Stuart, the 'Old Pretender'. He had several illegitimate children - one of them, James Fitzjames, Marshal Berwick.