HOW JAMES II LOST THE THRONE | Was the warming pan baby real? | History of the Glorious Revolution

it's june 1688 and the queen of england the former mary beatrice of modena has just fulfilled her main purpose in life she's given birth to a healthy son who can succeed his father james ii it should be a cause for celebration instead little prince james francis edward stewart is going to become known as the baby who caused a revolution for within five months of his arrival his existence will cost his father the throne force the family into exile allow his much older half-sisters and cousin-brother-in-law to seize the crown and he will be at the center of the original fake news story the warming pants scandal this is history calling and in this episode we're going to look at the history of the glorious revolution at how james ii lost the throne and at the birth of the jacobites [Music] [Music] if you enjoy learning about history especially royal history please remember to give this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel with notifications switched on so that youtube lets you know every time i upload you can also find links to my instagram account and patreon page in the description box below james ii and his offspring were never meant to sit on the throne born in 1633 as the younger son of charles the first and henrietta maria of france he was never supposed to be anything but second fiddle to his big brother charles ii things don't always work out as planned however and although charles ii did have an impressive number of children unfortunately none of them were with his wife the portuguese princess catherine of braganza thus when he died in 1685 the throne went to his brother james had been married twice marriage number one to lyrian hyde in 1660 was a scandalous affair the bride had been a lilian wedding to his sister princess mary of orange more on her in a minute she was already pregnant and she wasn't of royal blood still james went through with the wedding and although that first baby a boy if you're interested didn't survive they did have two daughters who made it to adulthood mary and anne born in 1662 and 1665 respectively their mother died in 1671 and in late 1673 the 40 year old james who was known as the duke of york at this point married again his new bride was the 15 year old italian princess mary beatrice of modena who had actually wanted to become a nun before royal judy took her to england by 1685 mary beatrice had had at least 10 pregnancies but all had resulted in miscarriages stillbirths or children who didn't live past the age of four so that when james inherited the crime his heir remained his eldest daughter by his first wife princess mary you'll remember i mentioned a moment ago that james had a sister who was also called mary and that she had been by marriage of course the princess of orange well this sister had produced a son called william before her untimely death in 1660 at the age of just 29 and in 1677 prince william of orange married his first cousin james's daughter mary they had no offspring but mary's younger sister anne who was married to prince george of denmark was still producing children in the 1680s and it looked as though james would hold the crying until his death then it would go to mary then to anne then to one of anne's children this was particularly comforting to the english political world not to mention large swathes of the general public because mary and anne had at the insistence of their uncle charles ii been raised as protestants whereas james and mary beatrice were catholic in 1687 though everything was turned upside down james had already been passing pro-catholic measures during the first two years of his rein in a country which was at the time virulently anti-catholic but it was tolerated in part because he was seen as a stop-gap king a man who was ultimately going to be replaced by his very protestant daughter and son-in-law mary and william who could be relied upon to undo any damage he did then in december 1687 queen mary beatrice announced she was pregnant although she was still only 29 this came as a surprise because the queen's last pregnancy had been in 1684. and that had ended in a miscarriage in fact she hadn't produced a living child since 1682 if her new baby was a boy however he would displace his half-sister mary in the line of succession and opened the way for a catholic stuart dynasty which could last for centuries it didn't take long for what we would now call the fake news machine to rule into action such was the desperation to prevent any new catholic heir obtaining the throne that rumors that mary beatrice's pregnancies were somehow suspect had actually been floated before back in 1682 before the birth of her short-lived daughter charlotte maria in early 1688 these same rumors began again as protestant detractors poured scorn on the idea of a new pregnancy the french ambassador said in early november that londoners refused to believe it and when catholic supporters of the royal couple such as the midwife and pamphleteer elizabeth collier expressed hopes that the baby would be a boy their seeming confidence was used to further bolster rumors that something nefarious was afoot as early as january 1688 the earl of clarendon who was the maternal uncle of princesses mary and anne but loyal to king james said that it is strange to see how the queen's great belly is everywhere ridiculed as if scarce anybody believed it to be true and satirical pamphlets appeared during the spring claiming that a baby would be bought or procured in some way to be passed off as the king and queens more damaging still was the credence given to such rumors by clarendon's nieces the king's daughters from the time rumors emerged that the queen was pregnant her stepdaughters were vehemently opposed to the idea in november mary who was living in orange with her husband said that their father certainty that the queen was expecting was strange as it was too early to be sure this is not true however while we cannot know the date of conception for certain thanks to the known movements of the king and queen we do know that it occurred on either the 6th of september or the 6th of october 1687. with the baby's eventual birthday the fact that clarendon said the queen had a great belly in january and a comment by the queen that she had felt the baby move when she thought she was only 12 weeks along suggesting it was the earlier of the two possibilities and that she actually felt the kicking at around 16 weeks either way it was certainly reasonable to suspect perhaps very strongly that mary beatrice was pregnant in november ann who was living in england with her husband george was not likely to disagree with her sister though in december the tuscan envoy wrote that no words can express the rage of the princess of denmark which is what anne was known as at the queen's condition she too soon began to moot the idea that the pregnancy was fraudulent telling her sister in mid-march that the queen's quote great belly is a little suspicious later that month she added that i believe when she is brought to bed nobody will be convinced it is her child except it prove a daughter for my part i declare i shall not except i see the child and she parted she further declared that despite how large mary beatrice had grown she looks better than she ever did which is not usual in other words she thought her stepmother should be suffering more from the pregnancy and decided that as she was apparently not she must be faking it hardly conclusive evidence part of the sister's concern was for the protestant church in england but there can be little doubt that jealousy and disappointed hopes played their parts here too both had come to expect that the throne would ultimately descend to them and neither had any living children at this point indeed if you've seen my video on anne's own childbearing experiences which i'll leave linked on screen and below for you you'll know that despite 17 known pregnancies none of her children outlived her worse still two of her girls had died at the start of 1687 and she suffered two miscarriages during the time that mary beatrice was pregnant after the second of these in april 1688 she absented herself from london and went to bath to take the waters there on the 24th of may with the intention of staying about five weeks the spa waters at bath were thought to have healing properties by the way with the baby expected no later than the first or second week of july this made it impossible for her to witness the later stages of the queen's pregnancy and highly unlikely that she would be in the room when the baby arrived this is interesting given that she had previously said she wanted to see mother and child parted and had poo pooed the idea that the waters and bath had any medicinal powers concerns were raised by the king among others about her missing her new sibling's birth but anne claimed to be acting on her doctor's orders this was probably true but the trip could still have been delayed by a few weeks and she appears to have used it as a convenient way to get out of london at the crucial moment the queen's pregnancy came to an end at st james's palace in london on the 10th of june 1688. there were literally dozens of people present in the room or in a room adjacent to the birthing chamber yet despite the king's litter and pretty accurate assertion that quote scarce any prince was ever born where there were so many persons present doubts were cast by his political enemies on the legitimacy of the child and soon enough on whether he was even queen mary's son let alone king james's princess anne despite having made sure she wouldn't be there when her brother was born now wrote to her sister on the 18th of june complaining that my dear sister can't imagine the concern and vexation i have been in that i should be so unfortunate to be out of town when the queen was brought to bed for i shall never now be satisfied whether the child be true or false she never took care to satisfy the world or give people any demonstration it is wonderful if she really had been with child that nobody was suffered to feel it stir but madame mazarin and lady sunderland these were some of the queen's attendants as our other people mentioned in this letter there are people that nobody will give credit to this is because they were catholic if out of her pride she would not have let me touch her me thinks it would have been very natural for her sometimes when she has been undressing to have let mrs roberts as it were by chance have seen her belly but instead of endeavoring to give one any satisfaction she has always been very shy both to her and me the great bustle that was made about her lying in at windsor and then resolving of a sudden to go to st james which is much the proper place to act such a cheat in and mr turins lying in the bedchamber that night she fell in labour and none of the family besides being removed from whitehall are things that give one great cause to be suspicious but that which to me seems the cleanest things in the world is her being brought to bed two days after she heard of my coming to town and saying that the child was come at the full time when everybody knows by her own reckoning that she should have gone a month longer after all this it is possible it may be her child but where one believes it a thousand do not for my part except they do give very plain demonstrations which is almost impossible now i shall ever be of the number of unbelievers there are a lot of problems with anne's letter first of all her supposed disappointment about missing the birth rings very hollow we've already seen that she had been spreading baseless rumors that her stepmother's pregnancy was false for months that she had basically made up her mind that the pregnancy was not real and that she left the capital only to complain later that she'd missed the birth her actions and words simply don't tally if she'd been concerned about a false baby brother being foisted on her leaving london instead of making sure she was in the birthing chamber was hardly the way to go about catching her stepmother in a lie second complaining that she wasn't allowed to feel the baby kick and that only catholic ladies were able to do so is untrue her biographer ann somerset whose book is linked blue for you points out that other women who attended on the queen said that they had seen her visibly pregnant and the protestant isabella wentworth who was one of the queen's women of the bedchamber had also felt the baby moving furthermore despite what anne lederer claimed mary beatrice had never been in the habit of letting her younger stepdaughter feel her belly when she was expecting so it was hardly surprising that she didn't do so in this instance something anne herself admitted to in a conversation with her uncle clarendon soon after the prince of wales's birth we might even see this decision as a kindness on mary beatrice's part after all asking your stepdaughter whose children are all dead and who keeps having miscarriages to feel the kicks of her new little sibling who might well displace her in the line of succession could easily be construed as heartless third as we've seen from the confusion over the conception date the prince may well have been born almost exactly on time but such confusion means that the delivery being at st james's palace instead of the planned windsor makes perfect sense if everyone assumed that the pregnancy had another month to go and there is no reasonable reason to think that a fraud would have been more easily perpetrated there than at another royal residence even anne had previously miscalculated her dates and given birth a month earlier than expected so it was unfair of her not to be more understanding of this happening to her stepmother i'm afraid that to me the princess's letters and actions during and immediately after the pregnancy reek of lies double standards grasping at straws and a determination to believe only what she wanted to be true rather than what the mountain of evidence indicated actually was even when she later spoke to one of the queen's ladies and mrs margaret dawson who gave her a minute account of the prince's birth right down to seeing the umbilical cord cut and refused to believe it soon there were rumors flying around london and beyond that a changeling had been smuggled into the queen's birthing chamber in a warming pan and that she had either not given birth at all or had had a stillborn or female child but how could anyone believe that in a room full of people no one had noticed that an imposter had been brought in some witnesses were able to later say that their backs were turned at the crucial moment but others fudged their words by saying only that they had seen the baby removed from the bed this is an important detail because for the sake of modesty the midwife worked underneath a light blanket or sheet spread over the queen so that mary beatrice wasn't exposed to the world this is why there were claims that a baby in a warming pan could have been surreptitiously pulled out from under the blankets like a rabbit out of a hat and why some witnesses would later be able to avoid saying that they had actually seen him born the whole theory is completely deranged though for a number of for one thing if you've ever seen a 17th century warming pan you'll know that there's no way you could fit a baby even a newborn into it it's designed to hold pieces of coal or embers so that it can be slipped beneath the sheets of a bed to warm it up it absolutely would not hold a child we're talking about a pan here not a bucket for another there were just far too many people in the room for such a trick to ever be pulled off even if not all of the dozens of witnesses were staring directly at mary beatrice's private parts the curtains around her bed were pulled back and there's no way none of them would notice a live baby being brought into the room and into the very bed of the queen yet none of those present said they had seen any such thing never mind a possibly stillborn or living female child being removed third in one of the few mentions of a warming pan being present made by someone who was actually in the room margaret dawson the same woman who was interviewed by princess anne specifically said she saw fire in the pan so unless this baby was a flea proof targaryen there's no way it ever existed fourth it would be next to impossible for another woman to be giving birth and to a live boy no less elsewhere in the palace without anyone else noticing so that her child with umbilical cords still attached could be swapped out for the queens as in seeing as this story was further ludicrous details would be added in the coming weeks and months when the prince of wales was taken ill soon after his birth thanks to the refusal of his doctors to feed him on human milk fresh rumors abounded that he or the changeling being passed off as the prince had died and been replaced with a new baby some said this had even happened twice such was the desperation to discredit the boy's parentage though the many gaping plot holes in the whole story were plain for anyone to see it suited england's protestant political elite as well as james's daughters and son-in-law william to believe or at least claim to believe it and soon they began conspiring against the king from their point of view james was continuing in his pro-catholic measures and with a new male heir to follow him who was going to be raised catholic and who stubbornly refused to die in his cradle only one thing was going to keep england a protestant nation a revolution on the 30th of june one of the most famous documents in english royal history was sent to william of orange signed by seven leading politicians known as the immortal seven it declared that the prince of wales was an imposter child and invited william to invade england assuring him that he would be widely supported by the english people if he did so during the rest of the summer william made plans to do just that but despite warnings from the french of what was coming james went into a kind of denial that his nephew son-in-law was really planning to hoist him from his throne and it was late september before he accepted the reality of the situation although there were other mainly religious reasons for the glorious revolution and those who supported it argued that the king had broken the laws of the country by his pro-catholic actions the birth of the prince of wales was certainly the hair that broke the camel's back and the king was at penis to prove the legitimacy of his heir on the 22nd of october he took the extraordinary step of calling together the privy council to interview those present during the queen's pregnancy and childbirth in order to dispel once and for all the rumors about the new little prince 42 depositions were taken including from his sister-in-law the dowager queen catherine of braganza and having read them i can tell you that they all shine with each other and provide a detailed and perfectly rational picture of the pregnancy and birth together they are more than enough to put to rest the idea that the prince of wales was a changeling at least in the minds of any reasonable person and you would be hard-pressed to find any professional historian nowadays who would take the warming pan theory seriously like princess anne though the king's detractors were determined to believe only what they wanted and the repeated testimony from mary beatrice's ladies that they had felt the baby kick seen milk on her smock while she was pregnant witnessed her ever growing belly observed her waters break and even assisted in the delivery of the prince feel to quell the warming pan rumors and by the way refused to go to the council she was currently pretending that she was pregnant again and used it as an excuse to avoid such duties james's rein was now in its final days as the glorious revolution got underway williams set sail from holland on the 1st of november having issued a manifesto in which he sought to justify his actions in part because he claimed the prince of wales was not his cousin brother-in-law but instead a changeling he landed in england on the 5th of november and released a declaration stating that he wished only to protect the protestant faith and the laws of the country and mount an inquiry into the baby's birth which never happened by the way james still believed in the loyalty of his daughter anne her husband george and some of his other family but he was soon disabused of this notion having already lost his nephew lord cornberry son of clarendon to william's side on the 14th of november on the 17th he set off to join the army he'd had assembled to defend his throne and took his son-in-law george of denmark with him the queen the prince of wales and princess anne all remained in london with anne pretending loyalty to her father who she would in fact never see again all the while writing to william that she would defect as soon as possible prince george was doing much the same thing he traveled with and attended on his father-in-law until he could find a good opportunity to abandon him before he could do so other major defections had taken place including of james's nephew the duke of grafton an illegitimate son of charles ii and john churchill the future duke of marlborough whose wife sarah was one of princess anne's great favorites george waited until his father-in-law was tucked up in bed one night then he defected too back in london orders were received to have sarah churchill taken into custody then for the queen to secure princess anne in one of the most dramatic moments of her life however anne managed to escape out of back passage from her rooms in the early hours of the 26th of november and soon headed north she arrived in nottingham on the 2nd of december and eventually met up with her husband in oxford on the 12th james meanwhile arrived back in the capital barely 12 hours after his daughter had fled it and was broken-hearted when he heard what she had done he opened negotiations with william on the 8th of december but was already planning to evacuate his queen and son to france for safety on the 9th of december queen mary beatrice disguised as a washerwoman took her baby and a few trusted servants and escaped out of london within a day she was in france on the 10th of december james attempted to flee too but he was captured in kent and taken back to the capital this wasn't what william wanted however he had no wish to kill his uncle and his wife's father and james was allowed to escape again on the 23rd this time he made it to france the glorious revolution was essentially over for the second time in as many generations a steward king had lost the throne though unlike his father charles the first at least james had kept his head his departure was presented as an abdication by his enemies and william and mary were declared joint king and queen in the only instance of such an arrangement in english scottish or british history though executive par was actually vested only in william but what happened next well james ii did eventually meet william in battle for the throne but not in england instead they clashed here in ireland at the battle of the boeing in july 1690 where william scored a decisive victory if you ever hear anyone referring to the glorious revolution as the bloodless revolution you might want to remind them about what happened here that year because i can assure you it was far from bloodless never again would james try to retake his throne by force as for his son little prince james stewart grew up in france at the court of saint germain only which was a home given to his family by his father's cousin louis xiv he was raised a catholic just as his parents wanted and joined in the nursery in 1692 by a younger sister princess louisa whose birth was yet another blue to the idea that mary of moderna couldn't have further children and that her son must therefore have been an imposter queen mary ii as princess mary had become died of smallpox in december 1694 leaving william iii as the soul monarch however when james ii died in 1701 it was prince james who was recognized by france and many other european courts as james iii and those who supported his father's right to the throne and later his own claim and that of his children became known as the jacobites because the latin word for james is jacobus in practice though william remained king until his own death in 1702 after which anne became queen the 1701 act of settlement in england formally barred any roman catholic from holding the throne and redirected it to a distant protestant branch of the stewart royal family the electors of hanover who inherited it after and died childless in 1714 the catholic side of the family wasn't faring much better princess louisa died in 1712 aged just 19 and mary of modena six years later in 1718. there were attempts by the jacobites in 1715 and 1745 to retake the throne from the hanoverian kings who held it by that point but both failed and james iii who had become known as the old pretender to the throne died on new year's day 1766 he'd had two sons charles known as bonnie prince charlie and henry but neither produced any legitimate children charles died in 1788 and henry in 1807 taking with him the jacobite claimed to the throne well over a century after the birth of his grandfather had sparked a revolution so to sum up what can we make of the warming pan scandal well as far as i'm concerned there is and always has been ample evidence that mary of modena really was pregnant in 1687 to 88 and that the child raised as prince james stewart was her son by james ii and the rightful heir to the english little british throne to believe otherwise you have to buy into a conspiracy the scale of which would have made it absolutely untenable scores and scores of people would have needed to be involved additional babies would need to have been sourced from their mothers and smuggled into various royal palaces and we need to believe that it's just a coincidence that the boy who grew up as prince james just happened to look like his reputed parents even though he wasn't really their son it's also physically impossible to fit a baby into a warming pan none of the many witnesses to the birth claimed that an imposter child had been brought in and mary beatrice's litter successful pregnancy with princess louisa shows that she was still perfectly capable of having healthy children this is one of those crackpot conspiracy theories that pop up every so often in history and which was used to partially justify the seizure of the throne because many of the english political elite and the wider royal family didn't want a catholic dynasty and william whose claim to the throne was far weaker than either mary or anne's refused to be merely a consort to his wife and would never have been monarch had he not taken the throne in this way as for princesses mary and anne they may have brainwashed themselves into really believing that their brother was a changeling in order to soothe their consciences but the lengths that anne in particular went to to either avoid seeing or explain away the pile of evidence that he really was her sibling suggests that deep down she knew the truth before i leave you i'd like to take this opportunity to thank my patrons for their generous support of this channel which helps me to keep creating videos for you if you'd like to become a patron and get some history calling perks see the patreon link in the description box below i've also had questions from some of you about making a one-off donation if that is something you would prefer to do for any reason youtube also have a thanks button below videos with preset amounts which will enable you to do so this allows you to post a customizable and brightly colored comment and get a one-time animation over the top of the video and again i'd like to take this chance to thank you for your support that's all from me for this week but let me know in the comments below if i've convinced you that little prince james wasn't a changeling or if you think i've been too hasty in dismissing the warming pan theory if you'd like to hear more about royal pregnancies check out one of these videos next i'll be back next week with something new and until then keep learning

Channel: History Calling

Views: 72,925

Keywords: how the stuarts lost the throne, the prince who caused a revolution, how james ii lost the throne, the baby who caused a revolution, the boy who caused a revolution, was the warming pan baby real, history of the glorious revolution, The warming pan baby, The fall of James II, an imposter prince, who was the warming pan baby, what caused the glorious revolution, James Francis Edward Stuart, History Calling

Id: 4uwpYY6njcE

Length: 29min 25sec (1765 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 04 2022