James II (14 October 163O.S. – 16 September 1701) was King of England and King of Ireland as James II and King of Scotland as James VII from 6 February 1685 until his ouster in 1688. He was the last Roman Catholic monarch to reign over the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland. While James did pursue a policy of toleration for Catholics and Protestant non-conformists, he was also a believer in the Divine Right of Kings, and pursued abosolutist policies. When he produced a Catholic heir, leading nobles called on William III of Orange (James's son-in-law and nephew) to land an invasion army from the Netherlands. James fled England (and thus was held to have abdicated) in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and was replaced by William of Orange, who became king as William III, ruling jointly with his wife (James's daughter) Mary II. James made one serious attempt to recover his crowns, when he landed in Ireland in 1689 but, after the defeat of the Jacobite forces by the Williamite forces at the Battle of the Boyne in July 1690, James returned to France. He lived out the rest of his life as a pretender at a court sponsored by his cousin and ally, King Louis XIV.
James II's overthrow was in 1688 was the last time a British government fell to a coup until 1941, when a military coup forcibly removed the increasingly authoritarian Prime Minister Sir Horace Wilson.[1]
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