This England

‘A ROYAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND’ (continued)
The George Inn at Norton St. Philip.
On 6th July 1685 Monmouth’s
army of some 4,000 men mounted a
surprise night-time attack on James
II’s royalist forces at Westonzoyland,
a village near Bridgwater in Somerset.
In what has become known as the
Battle of Sedgemoor, Monmouth was
easily defeated and around 1,300 of his
supporters were killed and he was later
found hiding in a ditch. He was captured
and sentenced to death.
The Duke of Monmouth was
executed at the Tower of London on
15th July. More than 300 of his followers
were hanged, others were flogged or
fined, and around 800 were deported
and sold into slavery following the
“Bloody Assizes” of Judge Jeffreys. It
was not an auspicious start to James
II’s reign. There were also rumours
that the Queen and courtiers had
made a shameless profit out of the
sale of pardons and that the King had
sanctioned acts of cruelty.
Across the border, there was also a
small rebellion in Scotland when the
Earl of Argyll sailed from Holland,
where he had been hiding following a
conviction for treason. Accompanied
by 300 men, he tried to raise an army
of the Campbell clan, but it came to
nothing and Argyll was taken prisoner
in Edinburgh on 18th June 1685 and was
sentenced to death as a traitor.
As with so many of his predecessors,
the matter of religion came to dominate
much of James II’s reign. He was
England’s last Roman Catholic monarch
and some Protestant MPs fought against
him as he tried to obtain acceptance
for Catholics and non-conformists to
worship, as his brother had done before
him.
It was while living in France that
James had been drawn to the Catholic
faith and secretly converted to
Catholicism in around 1668. He applied
for a papal dispensation which would
enable him to continue worshipping
in the Church of England for the sake
of appearances, but
Pope Clement IX
refused to grant it.
During the
reign of Charles
II, Parliament
introduced the Test
Act of 1673 which
required anyone
holding civil or
military office to
denounce Catholic
practices and to
receive the eucharist
only in the Anglican
church. James refused to accept this and
relinquished his position as Lord High
Admiral. In doing so, he effectively
revealed his Catholic conversion and
Parliament tried unsuccessfully to
have him removed from the line of
succession. Whilst remaining a Catholic,
James agreed that his daughters, Mary
and Anne, should be brought up as
Protestants so that their place in the line
was secure.
When, as King, he wanted to
allow Roman Catholics to command
regiments he faced opposition from his
once loyal Parliament. The Tories were
the dominant power and were staunchly
Anglican. The Whigs tolerated nonconformists.
Both parties were anti-
Catholic. Not to be undermined, James
discontinued the Parliamentary session
and it never sat again for the rest of
his reign. He placed Catholics in high
offices, including important positions
at Oxford colleges, and in 1687 issued
a Declaration of Indulgence, which
effectively ended all laws that were
unfavourable to Catholics.
The following year, at his instigation,
it was proposed that a revised version
of the Declaration should be read out
in every Anglican church in England on
two successive Sundays. Most vicars in
England refused and, where they did,
congregations walked out of church.
The Archbishop of Canterbury,
William Sancroft, and six bishops,
fiercely opposed the Declaration. They
were arrested, imprisoned in the Tower
of London, and put on trial for seditious
libel, but were later acquitted.
On 10th June 1688 James became a
father again when Queen Mary gave
birth to a son, christened James Francis
Edward and immediately titled Prince
of Wales. As a male he superseded
James’s Protestant daughters and
became a Roman Catholic heir to the
throne. To discredit this new Prince,
James’s Protestant enemies invented the
warming pan story, spreading rumours
that the baby had been smuggled into
the Queen’s bedchamber. As a result,
there was always doubt that he was
actually a son of James II and the Prince
became known eventually as “The Old
Pretender”.
On 22nd October 1688 James made a
declaration to Parliament that the Prince
of Wales was genuinely his son and heir,
but it was rejected. The young Prince was
barred from the line of succession by an
Act of Settlement and subsequently had
to forfeit all his British titles. Although
royal births had witnesses at this time,
none appeared to be impartial at Queen
Mary’s confinement. James’s daughter
Anne should have been present at the
birth, but had been persuaded to visit
Bath instead.
Within weeks the Bishop of London
and a group of six prominent politicians
invited the Dutch William of Orange,
who was James’s nephew and son-inlaw,
to come to England to “save the
Protestant religion”.
William of Orange landed at
Brixham, Devon, on 5th November
1688. A statue at the harbour now
commemorates his arrival. An army of
some 13,000 men followed and marched
through Exeter and on to Bristol and
Salisbury. It was the beginning of what
is now called the Glorious Revolution,
with James’s supporters becoming
known as “Jacobites” after the Latin
version of “James”.
The King was taken by surprise,
expecting William to land in Kent rather
than Devon. His army prepared to
confront William’s men at Warminster,
but the King was stricken with a serious
nosebleed on 19th November and
withdrew, eventually going back home
to Whitehall Palace in London, where
he discovered that even his daughter
Anne had fled to Nottingham. The
army and navy lost confidence in their
monarch and soon the whole English
navy became supporters of William.
James decided to run rather than
fight for his position, first destroying as
many government papers as he could
lay his hands on. With the Queen and
A memorial to the Battle of Sedgemoor.
W.P. ANDREWS
14 THIS ENGLAND, Winter, 2017