How Catholicism Killed The King | Stuarts: James II | Absolute History

the Stewart's a bloody rain is an evocation of the extraordinary error when these four Stuart Kings lived through turbulent times Catholic versus Protestant Parliament against King the English Civil War Europe torn apart by religious conflict the plague the Great Fire of London and finally a Catholic King fled his country and his throne [Music] James ii the catholic king of a Protestant country is a disaster waiting to happen the Stewart's vein had begun with James the first then Charles the first their belief in the Divine Right of Kings ultimately led to their downfall at the restoration charles ii became a popular if outrageous monarchy the kingdom remains simmering with catholic versus protestant sentiment king james ii was a last desperate attempt at a Stuart monarchy I think history is very tough on James a second he was a very brave headstrong figure a very good soldier a very good Admiral but unfortunately being so pigheaded lee roman catholic was the undoing of him he goes on an all-out very rapid process of colonization this completely wrecks the popular base of his power he didn't join in his first year he was in some ways a very competent person but he threw it away for no particular reason but it was absolutely extraordinary james ii just thought he was going to do his bit as a catholic king and it went spectacularly wrong [Music] king charles ii died on the 6th of February 1685 he had ruled over England Wales Scotland and Ireland for quarter of a century following the restoration of the monarchy after the collapse of Oliver Cromwell's Common Wealth Charles are converted to the Catholic faith on his deathbed and he will be succeeded by his younger brother King James ii a man who'd been catholic for nearly two decades in the country that was now officially protestant this was a grave concern james ii Swain would not last long [Music] in this series of examine the rain of the fall Stuart monix through the lives of the wind family who lived here a quitter castle in North Wales the winds owned hundreds of acres of land surrounding the castle and they prospered enormously during the Stuart era it all began with John Wayne who inherited the winners state in 1518 during the reign of the earliest Stuart Manik King James the first John would be knighted and the family would be honored with the title of baronet during King Charles the first reign guida was overseen by John winds son Sir Owen and seviche it was at this point that the connection between the wind family and the ruling Stuart dynasty was strongest of all a cemented win was a close personal friend of King Charles the first but then civil war broke out and the king was beheaded Sir Richard win never recovered and died just a few months after he witnessed his friend and King been publicly executed sir Owen wing had to care for the estate of his wife Lady Grace during the challenging period of Oliver Cromwell's rule with the restoration of the monarchy and the return of King Charles a second the winds would prosper once again this time was sir Owen son Sir Richard win the younger back in the historic royal court however Sir Richard when the younger had no male heirs leaning the estate pass to his daughter Mary known to everyone as Malley along with her grandmother Lady Grace it was her job to maintain the winner state in the new era of the restoration they do Sarah dies of the play in 1671 she's very young and then in 1674 at the age of 39 Sir Richard dies as well so it's too young and that means that they only have one child that's the lovely Lady Mary and at the age of 17 she is suddenly the heiress of a vast estate and the person who's who becomes the sort of grand choreographer of all of this is her grandmother Lady Grace when who survives as the matriarch this powerful figure of the past and she brokers marriage deal after marriage deal until she finds the one that is acceptable and the one that's acceptable turns out to be the young Lord Willoughby Dara's being Robert Bharti malee married Robert Bertie in 1678 later the jig of Ancaster a member of parliament the bowing that see that the wind family had gained during the reign of King James the first could not be transferred to the female line and so that was given to a junior branch of the wind family and the Bertie's acquired the great estate from that moment the direct connection of the winds to the land and the landscape and the people of North Wales stops because it becomes a secondary of stage it becomes an additional part of the Willoughby Dara's be Empire which was in his self quite huge they were a Lincoln cher family based at Grim's Thorpe Castle what would we dare has be goes on to become the Earl and then the Duke of Ann Kuster and castithan so he becomes very important the wind family one so powerful was now losing influence and status and so were the Stewart's for most of his life king james ii had never expected to become king he'd been born Sims palace in London in 1633 the second son of King Charles the first and his wife henrietta maria james held the title of the Duke of York from birth during the English Civil War had been confined by Parliament his birthplace said James's Palace while his father fought a losing battle with the Royalists forces at the age of 15 James managed to sneak away from his confines disguised as a woman and made it all the way to the Hague in the Netherlands continental Europe we where James had spends much of his life when his father was executed in 1649 when James was only 16 his elder brother was proclaimed king by the war lists and the parliaments of Scotland and Highland Charles was even crowned in Scotland in 1651 but the Stewart family was unable to reclaim England and eventually Oliver Cromwell prevailed becoming the undisputed ruler of a new Commonwealth [Music] Charles and his brother James saw exile in France their mother's homeland and it was during this time aboard that James was exposed to the beliefs and the ceremonies of the Catholic religion as time went by he was drawn to that faith with greater and greater conviction James even served in the French army but France chose to ally itself with Oliver Cromwell the Stewart family made the Lions with Spain as a result and James switched over to the Spanish forces and battled his previous French colleagues James learnt to be a soldier and he'd fought first for the French and then for the Spanish he'd fought for the French until he was driven out of the French army by the treaty by which cromwell allied with France against Spain but he just flipped over and went and fought for thee for the Spanish side and in fact in the last of the great battles of the New Model Army back to the Jews up in France and Belgium the English armies of Cromwell while other people fight against them was James he's on the battlefield James was considered a brave fighter and was on the brink of accepting the rank of Admiral in the Spanish Navy when the collapse of Cromwell's protectors in England rapidly changed the Stuart prospects James declines the Spanish offer within months his brother would reclaim the English throne James returned to London and was soon appointed Lord High Admiral of the Navy he became one of his brother's closest advisors and was widely praised for his tireless efforts to extinguish the Great Fire of London but in private his religious allegiances were shifting his wife Anne Hyde had converted to the Catholic religion almost as soon as the couple had returned to London by the late 1660s James had converted as well we now know that James was formally received the Catholic Church in 1660 aids he continues to attend Protestant services for a few years but the news about his going in privately to Catholic Mass Catholic confessors and so on was was leaking out and by 1676 James comes out so then you have a crisis that the heir to the throne is going to be a Catholic therefore there is a huge political campaign to prevent it well I think history is very tough on James a second we tend to forget all about him except the disaster of his three years as a king he was a very brave headstrong figure he was a very good soldier a very good Admiral and had fought bravely and he had a lot of qualities but unfortunately being so pigheaded lee roman catholic was the undoing of him [Music] 1673 was a critical year in the life of the future king james a second his first wife Anne Hyde who converted to the Catholic faith long before him died in 1671 and James is about to marry his second wife Mary of Modena 1673 was also the year of the test act this was a penal law both soon by Parliament and it required all civil and military officials to take an oath that declared their allegiance to the Anglican Church James was in an impossible position he couldn't betray his principles and make such an oath he refused resigned as Lord High Admiral well there have been rumors abounded that he converted to the Catholic faith and he was now married to a Catholic bride from Italy those rumours now seemed confirmed by James refused to make that oath the quiet brother test Act the difficulty with James ii was everyone year he was catholic it was not something he could hide and not something he wanted to hide either i mean obviously when push came to shove they had the test act he had to just resign his commission as admiral and that meant he was okayed because he didn't have to do any signing he didn't have to do anything the fact that James's elder brother king charles ii had no legitimate heirs with his wife Catherine of Braganza that meant James was next in line for the throne he became the focus of numerous conspiracy theories many suspected there were plots to assassinate Charles for placing with James and to Catholic sentiment rose again across the country fairly soon after the test acts and the sheer scale of the number of people who resigned which took people by surprise their Nydia they would have so many people those secret Catholics and the great anxiety of what will happen if a Catholic does become King you begin to get people who started to claim that the waller conspiracy at the top of government to assassinate and Charles to hasten James's accession to the throne that it's called the Polish plot and the claim that there were though there were a large number of people who were conspiring to assassinate the king and that if James didn't know about it he was turning a blind eye to it and in any case he was the beneficiary of what they were doing on the way to prevent the assassination of the king on the succession with a Catholic ruler who was to pass an act that would mean that the Catholics couldn't couldn't benefit from the assassination and if there was a law which prevented the Catholic successor there's no point in killing the existing king particularly one who had been very lenient you know his attitude to the Catholic population [Music] to soothe the worried public king charles ii arranged for James's daughter Mary to marry the Protestant William of Orange James will Upton Lee consented to the match the marrying of William of Orange who was a royal British blood and therefore had a potential claim to James's elder daughter gave her a potential focus now for those who had just not prepared to tolerate a Catholic King this was not enough however to relieve the growing hysteria in the country and in Parliament in 1679 the exclusion bill was introduced into the House of Commons if passed it would have prevented James some inheriting the throne because he was Catholic the exclusion bill was also having an impact at Whittier castle Malley win had married or bertie Lord Willoughby Darris be the previous year he had tried unsuccessfully for election to Parliament Malley winner her grandmother Lady Grace eagerly await correspondence from him as unrest spreads across the country at the thought of King Charles seconds brother James becoming the first Catholic monarch my lady my lady thank you to portal but the no others that could deliver your letters grandmama the years on tile have not printed him past use I cannot conceive of Whittier without him but surely there are others who can share his burden Master Williams has a son a boy he is 19 how fares your husband his Robert recovered from his disappointment he resolves to stand again in the next election though when that will be the exclusionists and watch in the ascendancy even if the bill passes through the Commons it will fail in the law practice the Duke of York will be king child fool doe he be not in my time I pray the Duke not abide by his conscience his principles principles are an hour admired thing I wonder though the exclusionist mind can the law alter what God has settled if Parliament can choose itself a king why not to talent his Lord that pulls a society's very order I fear I suppose master Williams can learn the duties of the gatekeeper they grow so fast the young let us see if we can repay stal and tell him of his new apprentice the bill bitterly divided the Commons indeed parts of the modern British parliamentary system can be set a date from this dispute those who backed the exclusion bill became known as the Whigs those against became known as the torah's the bill was finally defeated in 1681 when it was rejected by the House of Lords clearly the failure exclusion and the revenge which is taken by the regime in dismissing so many prominent supporters occlusion from the abolition will produce acid always housing history you know some people who overreact and think the only solution is to assassinate Charles and James there's a lot of talk there's not talk clear how much action there is the plan to intercept him as he returns to London from the races in Newmarket but he facts may return early and so the plot hadn't matured but when you have plots there are always people in a new trade them because you can't make a plot work without a lot of people knowing and if a lot of people know it's increasingly likely somebody will know who will betray it and that's what happens the Bott assassination attempt on the Stuart brothers in 1683 provoked a wave of sympathy for James several with opponents were implicated and James's position was strengthened further as a result of their fall the Catholic Duke of York would indeed be king [Music] King James ii was crowned on April the 23rd 1685 was almost immediately he faced a rebellion from his own nephew the Duke of Monmouth Monmouth was the eldest illegitimate son of King Charles a second he proclaimed himself the true king in Lyme Regis in Dorset and his Monmouth rebellion attempted to overthrow King James a second here at quitea the situation was followed especially closely because Molly's husband or what Burton was a captain I was now fighting on behalf of King James in the attempt to swiftly crush the rebellion it gives me great joy dear husband to hear of your efforts in London and the Commons on behalf of our new king there was great rejoicing here at Grimm's Thorpe as well the Sunday gone the parson even read from the pulpit his Majesty's words which I thought very fine and noted well I shall make it my endeavour to preserve this government both in church and state as it is by law established as I shall never depart from the rights and prerogative of the crown so I shall never invade any man's property the parson gave it much import the word of a king being more secure by far than any mutable law the walibi dara'a be is holding office under James a second but also interestingly he's captain of a troop of horse under King James fighting at the Battle of Sedgemoor 1685 so against the Duke of Monmouth in the Monmouth rebellion that's very interesting the Monmouth rebellion was quickly dealt with House was another rebellion in Scotland that occurred at the same time known as Argyll was rising led by the Earl of Argyll these two rebellions had been coordinated together neither of them were able to drum up enough volunteers in the end both the Duke of Monmouth and the Earl of Argyll were captured and executed the rebellions were put down with ease but they deepened James's insecurities he strengthened his army and put loyal men in charge of the regiment's this might have eased his worries but the actions caused alarming Parliament a standing army of such size was not a tradition and many of the chosen commanders were Catholics this placed Molly's husband Lowe Willoughby's position as captain under threat are you in there boy forgive me milady thought it was young Williams I can have these chambers readied no no well perhaps just the fire Tao yes milady well you not sit a moment what I know you did so with my grandmother from time to time perhaps in her memory and how is master Williams proving tardy often the need of a bath I can see why you and my grandmama got on so you were a soldier were you not for the martyred King we have always been loyal servants to the crownless family my husband's likewise he's been turned out of his employment as captain the king is displeased with the militia he desires a standing army with officers he can trust though Robert led a troop of horse against Monmouth in 85 he is not of the Pope ish faith nor his brothers the king has cleared the army of our whole family I'm sorry m'lady we were only ever loyal but our hope for advance now seems quite remote the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 has seemed like a last desperate attempt to return a Catholic monarch to the throne but now with King James a second the seemingly impossible had happened the new Kings royal court was soon dominated by Catholics a representative from Rome was welcome for the first time so the days of Mary the first over a century before in May 1686 James sort of ruling from the courts to show he had the power to dispense with acts of parliament he fired judges who disagreed with him the following year he made a new declaration of indulgence announcing religious toleration including for the English Catholic minority and all did it be read for every pulpit in the land the man thought to be the instigator of the declaration of indulgence was William Penn the founder of Pennsylvania and member of a new religious movement that had arisen during Stuart rule Quakerism pen went on a tour of the country to promote James's declaration of indulgence but it was fiercely resisted by the Anglican clergy James overplayed his hand he wants to give Catholics a lot of power so they can demonstrate they can use it responsibly so they can show they could be Catholics who will live in peace with their Protestant neighbors so he goes on an all-out very rapid process of Catholicism of local government of the civil service he's determined to reverse the penal laws he's got to find people who will do his bidding who are Protestant and so the Anglican establishment are pushed aside and lots of Quakers and Presbyterians and others are pressed into service to be nominated for Parliament he changes the conditions of elections in towns so that the town councils will elect MPs are not the general electorate he narrows the franchise and then of course he himself nominates the people who will be the town councillors he's an extraordinary extraordinary thing and he calls in every single existing MP one by one and asks them if they will support the repeal of the penal rules and they test acts and they all say no so he has to go to these even more desperate lands and this this completely wrecks the popular base of his powdered enjoyed in his first year the Archbishop of Canterbury along with six other bishops defy the king's orders the seven bishops as they were known soon arrested taken to the Tower of London but their acts of resistance galvanized the public in an unexpected manner the bishops were eventually acquitted at their trial and this meant jubilant scenes of contamination embarrassing the king with each passing month of his reign James seemed to mimic and exceed the example of his executed father more and more his attempts to rule as an absolute monarch or being fiercely resisted his reign that has started with enthusiasm general goodwill was coming to a crashing end I think he believed it was his duty as a Catholic Prince to push forward their Catholic agenda in this country he strayed into parts of life that were very threatening to the establishment he got involved in the election of fellows at maudling College Oxford and it became a cause celeb with people having very important influential people being put into prison because they disagreed with him and at the end of the day I think he thought his powers as a monarch were greater than they were he hadn't taken on board the lessons of the civil wars the fact that the Stewart's weren't able to just behave as they wished on the 10th of June 1688 King James and his wife Mary of Modena had a son according to the walls of primogeniture this child was due to inherit the throne but James already had two daughters from his first marriage Mary Ann Ann and they'd been raised Protestant according to the wishes of King Charles a second the people just about tolerated James's pro-catholic rule because they knew his only possible successors were his Protestant daughters but now with the baby there was a real threat of a permanent Catholic dynasty and too many in the church and across the country this was simply unacceptable and there's another pretty intriguing twist to this story the child born to King James 2nd and Mary of Modena was rumored to be an imposter the story went that the royal baby was stillborn and another child was smuggled in to replace him and ensure the Catholic succession when James seconds second wife married Madonna had a son even that wasn't enough I mean clearly that boy should have been king in the the law of succession but the Protestant establishment managed to say that the baby had been smuggled in in a bedpan it wasn't really the rightful heir to the throne and there was a ready-made in William and Mary and their line King James ii knew he had a problem on his hands he published testimonies of numerous witnesses who be present at the birth of his son he also made plans to pack the next parliament with his supporters and cement his grip on power but their news reached him of a fresh challenge to his authority William of Orange the husband of James's Protestant daughter Mary was coming to England with an invasion force what became known as the Glorious Revolution bigger they persuaded William and Mary that they were being cut out of their lawful rights by this tender Charter than they should come to England to insist on their rights to a full public inquiry into legitimate C of the new Prince of Wales and William is willing to do that because William is fighting an all-out war goes through the 14th and he desperately wants English resources he was English troops and above all English money now the contender was William who saw England is a very very useful Ally particularly its wealth and it's Navy in his perpetual battle against louis xiv france so that's why he was prepared to do it it wasn't out of any great pride or whatever it was purely practical he wanted to have the english on sight against france in the great struggle against the catholic king [Music] William of Orange certainly had pedigree he been involved in several battles with the catholic king of france and he was seen across you of us storage defender of the Protestant faith his Armada of 463 ships coward fifteen thousand fighting men across the channel William landed his forces at Torbay on the 5th of November 1688 eighty-three years after Guy Fawkes his attempt to end the rule of Stuart Kings had failed another attempt on another King James was about to begin and this time it wasn't going to fail [Applause] the Glorious Revolution is sometimes known as the bloodless revolution well that's not literally the case it certainly was very low on cutters when William oranges forces arrived on the English coast the army of King James ii that they were up against was twice the size but william knew he had support among the english and his strategy was perfect he gathered in the finances joins preparations for the war to pay his soldiers for three months in advance meaning they were happy to delay any battle William's patience paid off as James's troops soon started to defect an anti-catholic riots spread across the land the brief reign of james ii was collapsing and he knew it Lord Willoughby dara'a be advised his wife Molly to seek refuge in the relative safety of grittier castle a support for William of Orange was spreading [Music] no running a little birth what did I say how long will my lady and the children be a residence as long as my husband deems it necessary for our safety eternal insurrection is it how do you perceive their local sentiment their King jailed how Lord Bishop some might mark that in his favor others less but do you detect any general inclination he ought not to have done it my lady my husband is for the Duke of Orange he marches on York with his brothers and his uncle stays at Port so the family can claim loyalty should the enterprise go awry what none of Robert and the letters come I shall have them brought at once day or night [Music] James's real problem lies in the fact that he's relying on certain loyalties that are no longer intact his own children the two daughters Mary and Ann have been persuaded to put their Protestantism above their duties as daughters and this of course is a devastating blow to James when he finds this out and also some of his finest generals have made it clear that they will fight against the king rather than for him I'm including John Churchill who becomes the first to Cumorah who had been really the instrument who defeated Monmouth at the Battle of Sedgemoor three years earlier maybe it was because he was a Protestant he couldn't bear to help a Catholic but James was correct to say that he had taken him from an obscure pageboy given him a commission and helped him on his way and now this young brilliant commander was fighting against him when william arrives James's commanders are career mercenaries they're not Catholics they do what mercenaries always do they make a calculation on whether they think they're going to win and James is having some sort of nervous breakdown he has incessant nosebleeds which had clearly hypertension he's clearly behaving irrationally and I think the professional soldiers like John Churchill are the future Duke of Marlborough they look at their commander-in-chief and they think this is not a guy I want to serve with to have your daughter's side against you in a matter really of life and death and of your dynasty's future and to have those who you've made from nothing into people of great substance that it must have been devastating on a personal level but there was always the thought during his remaining years that well look what happened to Charles a second here come back against the odds so we know it never happened but I there were a lot of people in England who were playing a double game communicating with James in secret just in case he did come back because they didn't want to end up being beheaded [Applause] they've taken York the northern nobles are declaring for William the King marches west to meet the prince with forty thousand men though Robert says that number is continually diminished whole armies are abandoning the Kings cause day by day Prince William's army grows all seems to be happening with grace beam m'lady well Robert is very hopeful [Music] unwilling to make the compromises that might have saved his reign James weathered himself to flee the country he ordered his unreliable army to disband his wife and baby son left for France in early December and when it came his turn to follow James fetch Utley dumped the Great Seal in the Thames without it no lawful Parliament could be called James fled to France to join his family and William let him go it is done the King has fled to France the Queen and the Prince of Wales - with scarce a battle or bloodshed will we be making the arrangements for your return grim stop Michele hulls are will these these are much up to chasing the young ones they have been most contented here as Hawaii King James's escaped to France was actually a total farce the yacht that was meant to take him across the channel was boarded by English fishermen they'd no idea who he was they thought he was a Jesuit spying he was kept prisoner for a week before the misunderstanding was rectified and he was even returned to London to Williams intense rage he's brought back by some fishermen in Faversham so he has to be allowed to escape a second time and this time you know the roads are kept clear and and the always odd under no no circumstance he's find it he gets into france and louis xiv who takes them in rather startled at this unexpected defeat he's experienced and sets them up with his own court of science a man near paris [Music] within a matter of weeks Parliament declared that James had abdicated the throne and left it vacant William and Mary were declared joint monarchs just as a promise of a stable succession had been so important to the elevation of James's sick to the throne as James the first in 1603 so it was the peace and security embodied by William and Mary that ultimately secured that crown for them I always view 1688 and James a seconds exile as the defining moment of the change that started with the outbreak of civil war in 1642 where really the the status of the crown is subjugated to that of parliament and it's James because of his three years of intensely unintelligent prejudice rule he brings it to a head finally so that the British Parliament gets the upper hand from then on [Music] James did not give up he was planning an attempt to reclaim the throne just as his elder brother Charles have done with the help of the French he landed in Ireland and raised an army to seize back the throne but he was defeated by William at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 James fled never to return to England [Music] I don't think James ii was a natural quit it was because of the overwhelming evidence that it was over he just misjudged the central tenets of the Protestant establishment in England particularly when they looked overseas to France and so what louis xiv was doing for protestants treating them as savagery people being broken on the wheel literally broken on a wagon wheel or being executed in other ways or being branded as being protestants and it was so close geographically and that the the thought that it might come across the channel to england meant that there was absolutely no way but what looked suspiciously like catholic absolutism could be tolerated by James's people James died in exile in 1701 convinced he'd lost his throne because God punished him for his adultery his remains were destroyed during the French Revolution and so too were his memoirs meaning that we don't have an awful lot of his perspective and we've got rather a lot of the opinions of his enemies James's descendants made attempts to get that phone back his son the reported imposter James Francis Edward became known as the Old Pretender he started a rebellion in 1715 the Jacobite rising and tried to restore the Exile Stuart dynasty he failed there was another attempt in 1719 with Spanish support but it was just as ineffective then in 1745 King James second grandson Bonnie Prince Charlie made one final shot at the crown but the country had moved up King James the second was the last Stuart King [Music] the winds span the whole rise and fall of the Stewart's Sir John wing is knighted in 1606 three years after James the first came to the throne one of the very first baronet's Charles the first served loyally by Sir Richard win 2nd baronet the 4th baronet Richard when the younger was Chamberlain to the Queen of Charles a second the brief reign of James second followed by the Glorious Revolution in 1688 and then in 1689 Lady Mary win the last of the wings dies wadiya castles glory has also come to an end [Music] [Applause] [Music] those four Stuart men who rules England Wales Ireland Scotland each wrestled with similar problems the scope the nature of government was contested at this time as it never was before it made their era divisive often bloody but the reigns of the Stuart kings saw the beginnings of the modern British state the unification of England and Scotland the last death battles of absolute monarchy and the rise of parliament as a dominant power in the [Music] [Music]

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 140,777

Rating: 4.8514285 out of 5

Keywords: history history documentary funny history fun history school, timeline, stuart king, king, stuart, stuart england, stuarts, stuart succession, stuart james, the stuarts, stuart absolutism, house of stuart, united kingdom, the last stuart king, james II, Stuart documentary, english royalty, british history

Id: VmSB1P_UDrY

Length: 43min 54sec (2634 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 17 2020