JAMES II, King of ENGLAND. — Born in London on 15 Oct. 1633, died at St. Germain on 17 Sept. 1701. Second son of Charles I, he was taken prisoner during the revolution in which his father lost his life. After two years of imprisonment (1646–48) he managed to escape, first to Holland and then to France. When the monarchy was restored by his brother Charles II, he returned to England and in 1672 publicly announced his conversion to Catholicism. His second marriage to Mary Beatrice of Modena (1673) heightened the hostility surrounding him, and his ties with France and support for the Catholic cause obliged him to take refuge in the Spanish Netherlands (1678).
Nevertheless, at the death of his brother (1685) he ascended the throne without opposition and proved himself an able administrator of the army and navy. From the outset, however, he encountered grave difficulties in his religious policy. His determined policy of Catholic restoration in a country now firmly rooted in Protestantism sparked a bloody chain of rebellions and repressions, which exacerbated relations between the monarch and his many opponents to the point that they turned to William of Orange, James’s son-in-law and a champion of the Anglican party. William landed in England at the head of an army and was proclaimed king (1688), while James II was forced to flee to France.