GETTY IMAGES“Although William and Mary had taken
the throne without contest, James
and his heirs would inspire a romantic
loyalty for many years to come”
Trac y Bor ma n is an author and historian. Her
latest book, Thomas Cromwell, is published by
Hodder & Stoughton, 2014followed the example of its counterpart in
London. Rather, it had declared that James
was still king and had passed a bill of
attainder against all those who had
‘rebelled’ against him.
The following month, support for his
cause also materialised in Scotland, when
John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount
Dundee, raised James’s standard in the
heart of Dundee. At first, Viscount Dundee
struggled to raise many supporters but,
bolstered by the arrival of 300 Irish troops,
his army attracted a growing number of
soldiers from Scottish clans, particularly
in the Highlands. On 27 July, the by-now-
considerable Jacobite army routed
William’s men at the battle of
Killiecrankie, slaughtering about
2,000 men.
But William was quick to muster more
forces and, during the months that
followed, he reclaimed the initiative.
Meanwhile, James’s army was decisively
beaten by royal forces at the battle of the
Boyne in July 1690. News of this prompted
the remaining Scottish support to collapse,
and William obliged the Jacobite rebels
there to swear allegiance to him two years
later. Meanwhile, James had returned
to France in disgrace, leaving behind
him scores of disgruntled Irish
supporters, who never forgave him
for deserting them.
The good life
James enjoyed a life of luxury in France,
thanks to the generosity of King Louis
XIV, who always had an eye for causing
trouble for his English rival. James and his
family were offered the royal château of
Saint-Germain-en-Laye as their principal
residence, where a number of their
supporters and fellow exiles stayed
with them.
Meanwhile in England, events had taken
a turn in James’s favour. The premature
death of James’s daughter Mary in 1694
seriously undermined the credibility of her
husband’s rule. Their subjects had
willingly accepted Mary as a true Stuart
queen, but their natural xenophobia had
always made them distrustful of William,
whom they variously nicknamed as ‘Rotten
Orange’, ‘Hook Nose’ and ‘The Little
Spark’. James and his French patron Louis
celebrated when they heard the news,
believing that William could not survive
for long.
It seemed that their hopes would be
realised when, two years later, a body of
‘Jacobites’ (as James’s supporters became
known, after the Latin for James)
attempted to assassinate William III and
restore James to the throne. But the plot
failed miserably and did more harm than
good to the cause of the ‘king over the
water’. Later, in 1696, Louis XIV offered tohave James elected king of Poland. But
James refused to accept on the grounds
that it might lead his English subjects to
believe that he was no longer eligible to be
their king too. The French king concluded
a peace with William the following year.
Although he was still content for James to
shelter in his kingdom, it was clear that the
deposed king could expect no further
support from him in future.
During his final years, James lived a life
of austerity and, apparently, penitence at
his home in France. He had not altogether
relinquished hopes of regaining the throne
for his son, however, for he wrote James
Francis Edward Stuart a memorandum
on how to govern England. It was a
gesture that owed more to optimism
than to realism.
James II died of a brain haemorrhage
on 16 September 1701 at the French palace
that had been his home for the past
11 years. The man who supplanted him
as king, William III, survived him only
by a little under six months.The battle of the Boyne: William of Orange
claimed the throne from James II who
then fled to France