Early Modern England 1485-1714: A Narrative History (68 page)

One place to look for an answer is in the new king’s personality. James II (see
plate 20
) was neither so clever, nor so subtle as his brother. As we have seen, he was incapable of dissembling the Catholicism that so alarmed his subjects. Instead, from the moment he became king he worshipped openly and ostentatiously, asking Sir Christopher Wren to design an elaborate Catholic chapel at Whitehall. As his piety might seem to imply, James II was not as fun-loving as Charles II. At the beginning of his reign he banished from Whitehall all the men and women of pleasure, including (albeit temporarily) his own mistress, Catherine Sedley, countess of Dorchester (1657–1717). In some ways, this sobriety was not such a bad thing after the scandalous behavior of the “Merry Monarch.” The Crown needed to restore its dignity and it needed to save money. The new king was not afraid of attacking entrenched interests and his orderly mind caused him to launch a major “downsizing” of the court, eliminating sinecure offices and much of the fee-taking system. The result was a smaller, more efficient, and thriftier court – but also one which was much less exciting and lucrative – than his brother’s had been.

Plate 20
James II,
by unknown artist. National Portrait Gallery, London.

In short, James II may have been an excellent administrator, but he was a terrible politician. A soldier since youth and a Roman Catholic for nearly two decades, he craved order, hierarchy, and obedience. He regarded questioning or disagreement from his subordinates, whether in Parliament, the court, or the military, as signs of disloyalty. Consistent with this, he was a lifelong absolutist.

In James’s view, his father’s (Charles I’s) only mistake was to make concessions. Above all, James II was convinced of the truth of the Roman Catholic faith and of his moral duty, as king, to bring his people back into the fold – regardless of their individual feelings on the matter. In his defense, James probably had no intention of persecuting his Protestant subjects into conversion or oblivion
à la
Bloody Mary. Rather, he seems to have believed that, if all Christian faiths were put on an equal footing by a toleration, thus creating a free market of ideas and discourse, his subjects would see the self-evident truth of the Old Faith as he had done. Somewhat ironically given the rigid nature of James’s personality, the pursuit of religious toleration became the major policy initiative of his reign. Historians have debated his sincerity ever since. But whatever his motivation, as in his administrative reforms, this otherwise old-fashioned and conservative man was too far ahead of his times for his own good.

The king began to act on his convictions within six months of his accession. In November 1685 he demonstrated his complete lack of political savvy by announcing to Parliament not only that he intended to keep his army in being, but that he planned to retain its Catholic officers. James’s heretofore compliant Parliament responded by demanding their dismissal. The king’s immediate reaction was to end the session. His long-term reaction was multi-pronged. First, he began to pack the judiciary to ensure that they would support his interpretation of – some would say his assault on – the laws. As a result, in the test case Godden versus Hales, the courts upheld the king’s ability to dispense with the Test Act in the case of particular individuals. This allowed him to place more Catholics in civil government and the army, not only in England but in Scotland and Ireland as well. Next, James used his prerogative power to suspend the Cavalier Code. That is, in April 1687 he issued another Declaration of Indulgence, in effect granting religious freedom to both Dissenters and Catholics. Like his brother in 1672, the king hoped that those on either extreme of the religious divide would make common cause against the Anglican supremacy. As in 1672, he would be disappointed, for, once again, many prominent Dissenters refused to cooperate.

These were piecemeal initiatives. What James really wanted was
repeal
of the laws against Dissenters and Catholics, not a temporary suspension. To secure this, he would need a parliament of a different color. Taking a page from his brother’s notebook, in 1686 he had begun to remodel the corporate governments, and therefore, the electorates, of the towns. He also purged the lieutenancy and county bench. But this time he removed Anglican Tories – heretofore his staunchest supporters – from service as lords lieutenant, JPs, civic officials, even masters of university colleges. This process was stepped up in the autumn of 1687, when government agents began to ask JPs, militia officers, and other local officials the notorious “Three Questions”: each was asked if he would support:

1) repeal of the penal laws and Test Act if elected MP;

2) the election of MPs so disposed; and

3) the Declaration of Indulgence by “living friendly with those of all persuasions.”

These questions were profoundly uncomfortable for the Tory gentry, forcing them to choose between loyalty to their king and loyalty to their religion. After much equivocation, only a quarter would give their unqualified assent. Most who gave an answer did so in the negative to the first two questions and a few even denied that they could live friendly with Catholic and Dissenter neighbors. Despite intense pressure to cooperate, including billeting soldiers on prominent local officials, even time-serving Tories took a dim view of sitting on the bench of justices alongside Dissenting “fanatics,” with “their avowed King-Killing Principles.”
¹³
And so, James purged thousands of heretofore loyal Anglican Tory JPs and local officials.

The king would have liked to replace them with his fellow Catholics. But by 1685 there were few Catholics of any local standing left, and fewer still willing to offend their neighbors by assuming these positions. Many appointees never officiated. As a result, the king was forced to fill the lieutenancy and local bench with cooperative but obscure Dissenters and old Whigs – in fact, just about anybody who might be willing to give him a positive vote on toleration. It is very important to understand what James was doing here. In order to try to secure agreement for a policy that was wildly unpopular (with the ruling elite at least), James was disgracing and abandoning his most loyal friends, those who had stood by him during the Exclusion Crisis, the strongly Royalist, Anglican Tory gentry. He was, in effect, dispossessing the ruling class, disinheriting the “natural” leaders of the country by depriving the old landed families of political power which they had held for centuries and which they had come to view not as a privilege but as a right – indeed, as their property. He sought to replace them with a new, untested group who owned little land and embraced religious beliefs which most English men and women found repellent. He was, in short, taking a massive risk by asserting his powers of local control to the full.

Worse, James II expected the leadership of the Church of England to go along with these policies out of Royalist loyalty. Early in the reign he established an Ecclesiastical Commission to regulate the Anglican clergy. He also ordered the bishops to restrain anti-Catholic preaching. When the bishop of London, Henry Compton (1631/2–1713), refused to do so, the Commission suspended him from his pastoral duties. In the spring of 1688 James added insult to injury by ordering the clergy to read the Declaration of Indulgence from their own pulpits in May and June: in effect, they were being forced to endorse toleration to their congregations and, thus, repudiate the notion of a national Church. Several refused; others read it to empty churches
after
services; and seven bishops, including William Sancroft (1617–93), the archbishop of Canterbury, countered with a printed petition which publicly questioned the prerogative powers behind the Declaration. James was furious, calling the petition a “standard of rebellion,” and sending the seven bishops to the Tower on a charge of seditious libel.
¹⁴
This was a serious blunder, for it turned these churchmen, figuratively if not actually, into martyrs.

Why did the ruling elite put up with this for so long? For two reasons. First, no one wanted another civil war. The English ruling class remembered very well the violence of 1637–60. They had resolved never again to rebel against the king, a resolution strengthened by the constant preaching of Anglican clergymen that all good subjects owed passive obedience to even the most tyrannical monarch. Second, most people expected a short reign. James II was 51 years old at his accession: by the era’s standards, a relatively elderly man. Therefore, he would be dead in a few years and safely succeeded by one of his Protestant daughters – either Mary, married to William of Orange, currently living in the Netherlands, or Anne, married to Prince George of Denmark, who resided at court. Therefore, in 1687–8, as in 1557–8, the unpleasant Catholic experiment seemed destined to be a short one. Better to grumble and put up with it than risk another social and political upheaval as had been experienced within living memory. In short, for the first few years of the reign, the Great Chain as restored in 1660 still held.

It began to break in the winter of 1687–8. Rumors began to circulate, confirmed just before Christmas, that the king’s young wife, Mary Beatrice, was expecting a child. Court Catholics saw the announcement as a miracle and evidence of God’s favor for their side. If the child was a boy, James would be assured of an heir whom he could raise as a Catholic. Protestants viewed the announcement with suspicion, since Mary Beatrice had shown no signs of successful childbearing in the previous 15 years of her marriage. Why were Catholics so certain that
this
pregnancy would bear fruit? And how could they be so sure that it was a
boy,
anyway? Protestants immediately began to whisper that the pregnancy was being faked. For her part, Princess Anne went to take the waters at Bath, Somerset, to avoid being present at the birth. She did not want to know.

The queen’s pregnancy came to term in the early summer of 1688. James invited all of his loyal courtiers to witness the happy event. Unusual as this may sound, royal births were generally well attended by court ladies, at least, in part to verify that the child was, indeed, the legitimate heir. But there was obviously more urgency than usual to James’s request, and, although many found reasons to be absent, there were at least 42 witnesses in the birth room in St. James’s Palace on June 10, 1688. But at the crucial moment, nearly every Protestant present held back or turned away – ostensibly, to give the queen privacy (see
plate 21
). Their refusal to witness the birth allowed them to claim for years afterwards that it was a fake or that the child was stillborn, and a substitute smuggled up the backstairs in a warming pan. As for the Catholics present, who would believe them when they said that they had witnessed a real birth – of a little boy?

The king named his son James Francis Edward (1688–1766) and immediately ordered the ringing of bells and the setting of bonfires for the birth of the prince. But there was little popular enthusiasm for a Catholic heir whose godfather was the pope; in fact, the acquittal of the seven bishops a few weeks later caused far more public rejoicing. Immediately, the rumor began to spread that the child was not the king’s; poor James was forced to the indignity of having to deny this to the Privy Council. Many in the ruling class realized immediately the significance of the birth of a Catholic heir. In fact, three days
before
the birth, seven aristocrats – the earl of Danby, William Cavendish, earl of Devonshire (1641–1707), Richard, Lord Lumley (1650–1721), Edward Russell (1652–1727), Charles Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury (1660–1718), Henry Sidney (1641–1704), and Bishop Compton – had gathered together to address the situation. This group included nearly every shade of contemporary political opinion: three Whigs (Devonshire, Russell, Sidney), but also a Tory peer (Danby), a Scots peer (Lumley), and an Anglican bishop (Compton). Two (Lumley and Shrewsbury) were even converted Catholics. In addition, Sidney had strong connections at court, Lumley with the army, Russell with the navy. In short, James II had managed to offend virtually every segment of the political nation. These men had been meeting secretly with representatives from the prince of Orange for over a year. On June 7, 1688 they wrote, urging him to invade England.