James II & VII (14 October 1633 – 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. He was the last Catholic monarch to reign over the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Increasingly Britain's political and religious leaders opposed him as too pro-French, too pro-Catholic, and too much of an absolute monarch. When he produced a Catholic heir, the tension exploded and the leaders called on William III of Orange (his son-in-law and nephew) to land an invasion army from the Netherlands. James fled England (and thus abdicated) in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. He was replaced by William of Orange who became king as William III, ruling jointly with his wife (James's daughter) Mary II. Thus William and Mary, both Protestants, became joint rulers in 1689. 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 the summer of 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 is best known for his belief in absolute monarchy and his attempts to create religious liberty for his subjects. Both of these went against the wishes of the English Parliament and of most of his subjects. Parliament, opposed to the growth of absolutism that was occurring in other European countries, as well as to the loss of legal supremacy for the Church of England, saw their opposition as a way to preserve what they regarded as traditional English liberties. This tension made James's four-year reign a struggle for supremacy between the English Parliament and the Crown, resulting in his deposition, the passage of the English Bill of Rights, and the Hanoverian succession.

James, the second surviving son of Charles I and Henrietta Maria of France, was born at St. James's Palace in London on 14 October 1633. Later that same year, James was baptized by William Laud, the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury. James was educated by tutors, along with his brother, the future King Charles II, and the two sons of the Duke of Buckingham, George and Francis Villiers. At the age of three, James was appointed Lord High Admiral; the position was initially honorary, but would become a substantive office after the Restoration, when James was an adult. James was invested with the Order of the Garter in 1642, and created Duke of York on 22 January 1644. As the King's disputes with the English Parliament grew into the English Civil War James stayed in Oxford, a Royalist stronghold. When the city surrendered after the siege of Oxford in 1646, Parliamentary leaders ordered the Duke of York to be confined in St. James's Palace. In 1648, he escaped from the Palace and from there he went to The Hague in disguise. When Charles I was executed by the rebels in 1649, monarchists proclaimed James's older brother Charles II of England. Charles II was recognized by the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of Ireland and was crowned King of Scotland at Scone in Scotland in 1651. Although he was proclaimed King at Jersey Charles was unable to secure the crown of England and consequently fled to France and exile.

Like his brother, James sought refuge in France, serving in the French army under Turenne against the Fronde, and later against their Spanish allies. In the French army, James had his first true experience of battle where, according to one observer, he "ventures himself and chargeth gallantly where anything is to be done". In 1656, when his brother, Charles, entered into an alliance withSpain — an enemy of France — James was expelled from France and forced to leave Turenne's army. James quarrelled with his brother over the diplomatic choice of Spain over France. Exiled and poor, there was little that either Charles or James could do about the larger diplomatic situation, and James ultimately travelled to Bruges and (along with his younger brother, Henry) joined the Spanish army under Louis, Prince of Condé, fighting against his former French comrades at the Battle of the Dunes. During his term of service in the Spanish army, James became friendly with two Irish Catholic brothers in the Royalist entourage, Peter and Richard Talbot, and began to be somewhat estranged from his brother's Anglican advisers. In 1659, the French and Spanish made peace. James, doubtful of his brother's chances of regaining the throne, considered taking a Spanish offer to be an admiral in their navy. Ultimately, he declined the position; by the next year the situation in England had sufficiently changed, and Charles II was proclaimed King.

Anne became pregnant in 1660, but following the Restoration and Charles's return to power, no one at the royal court expected a prince to marry a commoner, no matter what he had pledged beforehand. Although nearly everyone, including Anne's father, urged the two not to marry, they did so. The couple was married secretly, then went through an official marriage ceremony on 3 September 1660, in London. Their first child, Charles, was born less than two months later, but died in infancy, as did five further sons and daughters. Only two daughters survived: Mary (born 30 April 1662) and Anne (born 6 February 1665). Samuel Pepys wrote that James was fond of his children and his role as a father, writing that he played with them "like an ordinary father", a contrast to the distant parenting common to royals at the time. James's wife was devoted to him and influenced many of his decisions. Even so, he kept a variety of mistresses, including Arabella Churchill and Catherine Sedley, and was reputed to be "the most unguarded ogler of his time." With Catherine Sedley, James II had a daughter, Catherine Darnley (so named because James II was a descendant of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley). Anne Hyde died in 1671.

After the Restoration, James was confirmed as Lord High Admiral, an office that carried with it the subsidiary appointments of Governor of Portsmouth and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. James commanded the Royal Navy during the Second (1665–67) and Third Anglo-Dutch Wars (1672–74). Following the raid on the Medway in 1667, James oversaw the survey and re-fortification of the southern coast. The office of Lord High Admiral, combined with his revenue from post office and wine tariffs (granted him by Charles upon his restoration) gave James a sufficient salary to keep a sizeable court household.

Following its capture by the English in 1664, the Dutch territory of New Netherland was named the Province of New York in James's honour. After the founding, the duke gave the colony to proprieters, George Carteret and John Lord Berkeley. Fort Orange, 240 kilometres (150 miles) north on the Hudson River, was renamed Albany after James's Scottish title. In 1683, he became the governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, but did not take an active role in its governance. James also headed the Royal African Company, a slave trading company.

James's time in France had exposed him to the beliefs and ceremonies of Catholicism; he and his wife, Anne, became drawn to that faith. James took Eucharist in the Roman Catholic Church in 1668 or 1669, although his conversion was kept secret for some time and he continued to attend Anglican services until 1676. In spite of his conversion, James continued to associate primarily with Anglicans, including John Churchill and George Legge, as well as French Protestants, such as Louis de Duras, the Earl of Feversham. Growing fears of Catholic influence at court led the English Parliament to introduce a new Test Act in 1673. Under this Act, all civil and military officials were required to take an oath (in which they were required not only to disavow the doctrine of transubstantiation, but also denounce certain practices of the Catholic Church as "superstitious and idolatrous") and to receive the Eucharist under the auspices of the Church of England. James refused to perform either action, instead choosing to relinquish the post of Lord High Admiral. His conversion to Catholicism was thereby made public. Charles II opposed the conversion, ordering that James's daughters, Mary and Anne, be raised as Protestants. Nevertheless, he allowed James to marry the Catholic Mary of Modena, a fifteen-year-old Italian princess. James and Mary were married by proxy in a Catholic ceremony on 20 September 1673. On 21 November, Mary arrived in England and Nathaniel Crew, Bishop of Oxford, performed a brief Anglican service that did little more than recognise the Catholic marriage. Many of the English, distrustful of Catholicism, regarded the new Duchess of York as an agent of the Pope.

In 1677, James reluctantly consented to his daughter Mary's marriage to the Protestant William of Orange (who was also James's nephew). James acquiesced after his brother Charles and William had agreed upon the marriage. Despite the Protestant marriage, fears of a potential Catholic monarch persisted, intensified by the failure of Charles II and his wife, Catherine of Braganza, to produce any children. A defrocked Anglican clergyman, Titus Oates, spoke of a "Popish Plot" to kill Charles and put the Duke of York on the throne. The fabricated plot caused a wave of anti-Catholic hysteria to sweep across the nation. In England, the Earl of Shaftesbury, a former government minister and now a leading opponent of Catholicism, attempted to have James excluded from the line of succession. Some members of Parliament even proposed that the crown go to Charles's illegitimate son, James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth. In 1679, with the Exclusion Bill in danger of passing, Charles II dissolved Parliament. Two further Parliaments were elected in 1680 and 1681, but were dissolved for the same reason. The Exclusion Crisis contributed to the development of the English two-party system: the Whigs were those who supported the Bill, while the Tories were those who opposed it. Ultimately, the succession was not altered, but James was convinced to withdraw from all policy-making bodies and to accept a lesser role in his brother's government.

On the orders of the King, James left England for Brussels. In 1680, he was appointed Lord High Commissioner of Scotland and took up residence at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh in order to suppress an uprising and oversee royal government. James returned to England for a time when Charles was stricken ill and appeared to be near death. The hysteria of the accusations eventually faded, but James's relations with many in the English Parliament, including the Earl of Danby, a former ally, were forever strained and a solid segment turned against him.

In 1683, a plot was uncovered to assassinate Charles and James and spark a republican revolution to re-establish a government of the Cromwellian style. This conspiracy, known as the Rye House Plot, backfired upon its conspirators and provoked a wave of sympathy for the King and James. Several notable Whigs, including the Earl of Essex and the King's illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, were implicated. Monmouth initially confessed to complicity in the plot, implicating fellow-plotters, but later recanted. Essex committed suicide and Monmouth, along with several others, was obliged to flee into Continental exile. Charles reacted to the plot by increasing repression of Whigs and dissenters. Taking advantage of James's rebounding popularity, Charles invited him back onto the privy council in 1684. While some in English Parliament remained wary of the possibility of a Catholic king, the threat of excluding James from the throne had passed.

Charles died in 1685 after converting to Catholicism on his deathbed. Having no legitimate children, Charles was succeeded by his brother James, who reigned in England and Ireland as James II, and in Scotland as James VII. There was no initial opposition to his succession, and there were widespread reports of public rejoicing at the orderly succession. James wanted to proceed quickly to the coronation, and was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 23 April 1685. The new Parliament that assembled in May 1685 was initially favourable to James, and the new King sent word that even most of the former exclusionists would be forgiven if they acquiesced to his rule. Most of Charles's officers continued in office, the exceptions being the promotion of James's brothers-in-law, the Earls of Clarendon and Rochester, and the demotion of Halifax. Parliament granted James a generous life income, including all of the proceeds of tonnage and poundage and the customs duties. James worked harder as king than his brother had, but was less willing to compromise when his advisers disagreed. Soon after becoming king, James faced a rebellion in southern England led by his nephew, the Duke of Monmouth, and another rebellion in Scotland led by Archibald Campbell, the Earl of Argyll. Argyll and Monmouth both began their expeditions from Holland, where James's nephew and son-in-law, William of Orange, had neglected to detain them or put a stop to their recruitment efforts. Argyll sailed to Scotland and, on arriving there, raised recruits mainly from amongst his own clan, the Campbells. The rebellion was quickly crushed, and Argyll himself was captured at Inchinnan on 18 June 1685. Having arrived with fewer than 300 men and unable to convince many more to flock to his standard, Argyll never posed a credible threat to James. Argyll was taken as a prisoner to Edinburgh. A new trial was not commenced because Argyll had previously been tried and sentenced to death. The King confirmed the earlier death sentence and ordered that it be carried out within three days of receiving the confirmation. Monmouth's rebellion was coordinated with Argyll's, but the former was more dangerous to James. Monmouth had proclaimed himself King at Lyme Regis on 11 June. He attempted to raise recruits but was unable to gather enough rebels to defeat even James's small standing army. Monmouth's rebellion attacked the King's forces at night, in an attempt at surprise, but was defeated at the Battle of Sedgemoor. The King's forces, led by Feversham and Churchill, quickly dispersed the ill-prepared rebels. Monmouth himself was captured and executed at the Tower of London on 15 July. The King's judges — most notably, George Jeffreys — condemned many of the rebels to transportation and indentured servitude in the West Indies in a series of trials that came to be known as the Bloody Assizes. Some 250 of the rebels were executed. While both rebellions were defeated easily enough, the effect on James was to harden his resolve against his enemies and to increase his suspicion of the Dutch.

To protect himself from further rebellions, James sought safety in an enlarged standing army. This alarmed his subjects, not only because of the trouble soldiers caused in the towns, but because it was against the English tradition to keep a professional army in peacetime. Even more alarming to Parliament was James's use of his dispensing power to allow Roman Catholics to command several regiments without having to take the oath mandated by the Test Act. When even the previously supportive Parliament objected to these measures, James ordered Parliament prorogued in November 1685, never to meet again in his reign. In the beginning of 1686 two papers were found in Charles II's strong box and his closet, in his own hand, stating the arguments for Catholicism over Protestantism. James published these papers with a declaration signed by his sign manual and challenged the Archbishop of Canterbury and the whole Anglican episcopal bench to refute Charles's arguments: "Let me have a solid answer, and in a gentlemanlike style; and it may have the effect which you so much desire of bringing me over to your church". The Archbishop refused on the grounds of respect for the late king.

James advocated repeal of the penal laws in all three of his kingdoms, but refused to allow those dissenters who did not petition for relief to receive it. In his own words, James expressed indignation that men had the impudence to advocate repeal of the penal laws against Protestants. James sent a letter to the Scottish Parliament at its opening in 1685, declaring his wish for new penal laws against refractory Presbyterians and lamented that he was not there in person to promote such a law. In response, the Parliament passed an Act which stated that "whoever should preach in a conventicle under a roof, or should attend, either as preacher or as a hearer, a conventicle in the open air, should be punished with death and confiscation of property". In March 1686, James sent a letter to the Scottish Privy Council advocating toleration for Catholics but that the persecution of the Presbyterian Covenanters should continue, calling them to London when they refused to acquiesce his wishes. The Privy Councillors explained that they would grant relief to Catholics only if a similar relief was provided for the Covenanters and if James promised not to attempt anything which would harm the Protestant religion. James agreed to a degree of relief to Presbyterians but not to the full toleration he wanted for Catholics, declaring that the Protestant religion was false and he would not promise not to prejudice a false religion.

James allowed Roman Catholics to occupy the highest offices of the Kingdoms, and received at his court the papal nuncio, Ferdinando d'Adda, the first representative from Rome to London since the reign of Mary I. James's Jesuit confessor, Edward Petre, was a particular object of Protestant ire. When the King's Secretary of State, the Earl of Sunderland, began replacing office-holders at court with Catholic favourites, James began to lose the confidence of many of his Anglican supporters. Sunderland's purge of office-holders even extended to the King's Anglican brothers-in-law and their supporters. Catholics made up no more than one fiftieth of the English population. In May 1686, James sought to obtain from the English common-law courts a ruling which showed that his power to dispense with Acts of Parliament was legal. He dismissed judges who disagreed with him on this matter as well as the Solicitor General Heneage Finch. The case, Godden v. Hales, affirmed his dispensing power, with eleven out of the twelve judges in Godden ruling in favour of the dispensing power.

In 1687, James issued the Declaration of Indulgence, also known as the Declaration for Liberty of Conscience, in which he used his dispensing power to negate the effect of laws punishing Catholics and Protestant Dissenters. He attempted to garner support for his tolerationist policy by giving a speaking tour in the West of England in the summer of 1687. As part of this tour, he gave a speech at Chester where he said "suppose... there should be a law made that all black men should be imprisoned, it would be unreasonable and we had as little reason to quarrel with other men for being of different [religious] opinions as for being of different complexions." At the same time, James provided partial toleration in Scotland, using his dispensing power to grant relief to Catholics and partial relief to Presbyterians. In 1688, James ordered the Declaration read from the pulpits of every Anglican church, further alienating the Anglican bishops against the Catholic governor of their church. While the Declaration elicited some thanks from Catholics and dissenters, it left the Established Church, the traditional ally of the monarchy, in the difficult position of being forced to erode its own privileges. James provoked further opposition by attempting to reduce the Anglican monopoly on education. At the University of Oxford, James offended Anglicans by allowing Catholics to hold important positions in Christ Church and University College, two of Oxford's largest colleges. He also attempted to force the Protestant Fellows of Magdalen College to elect Anthony Farmer, a man of generally ill repute who was believed to be secretly Catholic, as their president when the Protestant incumbent died, a violation of the Fellows' right to elect a candidate of their own choosing.

In 1687 James prepared to pack Parliament with his supporters so that it would repeal the Test Act and the penal laws. James was convinced by addresses from Dissenters that he had their support and so could dispense with relying on Tories and Anglicans. James instituted a wholesale purge of those in offices under the crown opposed to James's plan. In August the lieutenancy was remodelled and in September over one thousand members of the city livery companies were ejected. In October James gave orders for the lords lieutenants in the provinces to provide three standard questions to all members of the Commission of the Peace: would they consent to the repeal of the Test Act and the penal laws; would they assist candidates who would do so; and they were requested to accept the Declaration of Indulgence. In December it was announced that all the offices of deputy lieutenants and Justices of the Peace would be revised. Therefore, during the first three months of 1688, hundreds of those asked the three questions who gave hostile replies were dismissed. More far-reaching purges were applied to the towns: in November a regulating committee was founded to operate the purges. Corporations were purged by agents given wide discretionary powers in an attempt to create a permanent royal electoral machine. Finally, on 24 August 1688, James ordered writs to be issued for a general election. However, upon realising in October that William of Orange was going to land in England, James withdrew the writs and wrote to the lords lieutenant to inquire over allegations of abuses committed during the regulations and election preparations as part of the concessions James made in order to win support.

In April 1688, James re-issued the Declaration of Indulgence, subsequently ordering Anglican clergymen to read it in their churches. When the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Sancroft, and six other bishops (known as the Seven Bishops) submitted a petition requesting the reconsideration of the King's religious policies, they were arrested and tried for seditious libel. Public alarm increased when Queen Mary gave birth to a Catholic son and heir, James Francis Edward on 10 June of that year. When James's only possible successors were his two Protestant daughters, moderate Anglicans could see his pro-Catholic policies as a temporary aberration; the Prince's birth opened the possibility of a permanent Catholic dynasty, and led such men to reconsider their patience. Threatened by a Catholic dynasty, several influential Protestants claimed the child was "suppositious" and had been smuggled into the Queen's bedchamber in a warming pan. They had already entered into negotiations with William, Prince of Orange, when it became known the Queen was pregnant, and the birth of James's son reinforced their convictions. On 30 June 1688, a group of Protestant nobles, later known as the Immortal Seven, invited the Prince of Orange to come to England with an army. By September, it had become clear that William sought to invade. Believing that his own army would be adequate, James refused the assistance of Louis XIV, fearing that the English would oppose French intervention. When William arrived on 5 November 1688, many Protestant officers, including Churchill, defected and joined William, as did James's own daughter, Princess Anne. James lost his nerve, and declined to attack the invading army, despite his army's numerical superiority. On 11 December, James tried to flee to France, first throwing the Great Seal of the Realm into the River Thames. James was captured in Kent; later, he was released and placed under Dutch protective guard. Having no desire to make James a martyr, the Prince of Orange let him escape on 23 December. James was received by his cousin and ally, Louis XIV, who offered him a palace and a pension.

William convened a Convention Parliament to decide how to handle James's flight. While the Parliament refused to depose him, they declared that James, having fled to France and dropped the Great Seal into the Thames, had effectively abdicated the throne, and that the throne had thereby become vacant. To fill this vacancy, James's daughter Mary was declared Queen; she was to rule jointly with her husband William, who would be King. The Parliament of Scotland on 11 April 1689, declared James to have forfeited the throne (the Scottish Parliament upheld the Divine Right of Kings, so abdication was not a valid option). The English Parliament passed a Bill of Rights that denounced James for abusing his power. The abuses charged to James included the suspension of the Test Acts, the prosecution of the Seven Bishops for merely petitioning the crown, the establishment of a standing army, and the imposition of cruel punishments. The Bill also declared that henceforth, no Catholic would be permitted to ascend to the English throne, nor could any English monarch marry a Catholic.

With the assistance of French troops, James landed in Ireland in March 1689. The Irish Parliament did not follow the example of the English Parliament; it declared that James remained King and passed a massive bill of attainder against those who had rebelled against him. At James's urging, the Irish Parliament passed an Act for Liberty of Conscience that granted religious freedom to all Catholics and Protestants in Ireland. James worked to build an army in Ireland, but was ultimately defeated at the Battle of the Boyne on 1 July 1690 when William arrived, personally leading an army to defeat James and reassert English control. James fled to France once more, departing from Kinsale, never to return to any of his former kingdoms. Because he deserted his Irish supporters, James became known in Ireland as Séamus an Chaca or 'James the be-shitten'.

In France, James was allowed to live in the royal château of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. James's wife and some of his supporters fled with him, including the Earl of Melfort; most, but not all, were Catholic. In 1692, James's last child, Louisa Maria Teresa, was born. Some supporters in England attempted to restore James to the throne by assassinating William III in 1696, but the plot failed and the backlash made James's cause less popular. Louis XIV's offer to have James elected King of Poland in the same year was rejected, for James feared that acceptance of the Polish crown might (in the minds of the English people) render him incapable of being King of England. After Louis concluded peace with William in 1697, he ceased to offer much in the way of assistance to James.

During his last years, James lived as an austere penitent. He wrote a memorandum for his son advising him on how to govern England, specifying that Catholics should possess one Secretary of State, one Commissioner of the Treasury, the Secretary at War, with the majority of the officers in the army. He died of a brain hemorrhage on 16 September 1701 at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. His body was laid to rest in a coffin at the Chapel of Saint Edmund in the Church of the English Benedictines in the Rue St. Jacques in Paris, with a funeral oration by Henri-Emmanuel de Roquette. In 1734, the Archbishop of Paris heard evidence to support James's canonization, but nothing came of it. During the French Revolution, James's tomb was raided and his remains scattered.

James's younger daughter Anne succeeded to the throne when William III died in 1702. The Act of Settlement provided that, if the line of succession established in the Bill of Rights were to be extinguished, then the crown would go to a German cousin, Sophia, Electress of Hanover, and to her Protestant heirs. Thus, when Anne died in 1714 (fewer than two months after the death of Sophia), the crown was inherited by George I, Sophia's son, the Elector of Hanover and Anne's second cousin.

James's son James Francis Edward was recognised as King at his father's death by Louis XIV of France and James's remaining supporters (later known as Jacobites) as "James III and VIII." He led a rising in Scotland in 1715 shortly after George I's accession, but was defeated. Jacobites rose again in 1745 led by Charles Edward Stuart, James II's grandson, and were again defeated. Since then, no serious attempt to restore the Stuart heir has been made. Charles's claims passed to his younger brother Henry Benedict Stuart, the Dean of the College of Cardinals of the Catholic Church. Henry was the last of James II's legitimate descendants, and no relative has publicly acknowledged the Jacobite claim since then.