James II inherited the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland in February 1685 with a compliant parliament and a loyal elite that swiftly crushed early Protestant rebellions. A 52-year-old Catholic with no surviving son, he was tolerated because his heirs were his Protestant daughters Mary and Anne. Instead he used royal decrees to suspend the Test Acts that barred Catholics from office, just as about 40,000 Protestant refugees fleeing Louis XIV arrived in London.
In 1687 he demanded that the fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford apologize to him on their knees, then purged local officials with written loyalty tests and camped an expanded army at Hounslow Heath. In summer 1688 the Seven Bishops were acquitted of seditious libel and his wife bore a son, so nobles invited William of Orange, husband of Mary, to invade. When William landed in November, James’s army melted away, John Churchill and Princess Anne defected, and James fled to France in December. Parliament answered with the 1689 Bill of Rights.
- Catholics made up only about 1 percent of England’s population.
- The Archbishop of Canterbury and six bishops refused to read his toleration decree and were sent to the Tower of London.
- James suffered insomnia and nosebleeds that kept him bedridden at critical moments.
- He ordered his army to retreat toward London without attempting a fight.
- The Bill of Rights barred the king from suspending laws, levying taxes or keeping a peacetime army without Parliament.
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