The Last English King

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In the remaining years of the Hundred Years' War, France reconquered all the English territories on the French mainland except Calais, which was finally taken in 1558. However, the Channel Islands, despite a few unsuccessful attempts by the French to take the islands (culminating with the Battle of Jersey in 1781), have remained under continuous English and British sovereignty, with the exception of a period of German occupation during the Second World War. Reign [ edit ] Accession to the throne [ edit ] Coronation procession of King James II and Queen Mary, 1685 In 2009, Steven Pincus confronted that scholarly ambivalence in 1688: The First Modern Revolution. Pincus claims that James's reign must be understood within a context of economic change and European politics, and makes two major assertions about James II. The first of these is that James purposefully "followed the French Sun King, Louis XIV, in trying to create a modern Catholic polity. This involved not only trying to Catholicize England... but also creating a modern, centralizing, and extremely bureaucratic state apparatus." [172] The second is that James was undone in 1688 far less by Protestant reaction against Catholicization than by nationwide hostile reaction against his intrusive bureaucratic state and taxation apparatus, expressed in massive popular support for William of Orange's armed invasion of England. Pincus presents James as neither naïve nor stupid nor egotistical. Instead, readers are shown an intelligent, clear-thinking strategically motivated monarch whose vision for a French authoritarian political model and alliance clashed with, and lost out to, alternative views that favoured an entrepreneurial Dutch economic model, feared French power, and were outraged by James's authoritarianism.

Callow, John (2000). The Making of King James II: The Formative Years of a King. Sutton. ISBN 0-7509-2398-9. After the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066, William the Conqueror made permanent the recent removal of the capital from Winchester to London. Following the death of Harold Godwinson at Hastings, the Anglo-Saxon Witenagemot elected as king Edgar Ætheling, the son of Edward the Exile and grandson of Edmund Ironside. The young monarch was unable to resist the invaders and was never crowned. William was crowned King William I of England on Christmas Day 1066, in Westminster Abbey, and is today known as William the Conqueror, William the Bastard or William I.Charles, John Foster Kirk, History of Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, (J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1863), 36. The Jacobite pretenders were the deposed James II of England and his successors, continuing to style themselves "Kings of England, Scotland, France and Ireland" past their deposition in 1689. All four pretenders continued to actively claim the title King of France as well as that of King of England, Scotland and Ireland from 1689 until 1807: Royle, Trevor (2004). The British Civil Wars: The Wars of the Three Kingdoms, 1638–1660. Macmillan. ISBN 0-312-29293-7.

During his service in the Spanish army, James became friendly with two Irish Catholic brothers in the Royalist entourage, Peter and Richard Talbot, and became somewhat estranged from his brother's Anglican advisers. [26] In 1659, the French and Spanish made peace by the Treaty of the Pyrenees. James, doubtful of his brother's chances of regaining the throne, considered taking a Spanish offer to be an admiral in their navy. [27] Ultimately, he declined the position; by the next year the situation in England had changed, and Charles II was proclaimed King. [28] Restoration [ edit ] First marriage [ edit ] James and Anne Hyde in the 1660s, by Sir Peter Lely From the 1340s to the 19th century, excluding two brief intervals in the 1360s and the 1420s, the kings and queens of England and Ireland (and, later, of Great Britain) also claimed the throne of France. The claim dates from Edward III, who claimed the French throne in 1340 as the sororal nephew of the last direct Capetian, Charles IV. Edward and his heirs fought the Hundred Years' War to enforce this claim, and were briefly successful in the 1420s under Henry V and Henry VI, but the House of Valois, a cadet branch of the Capetian dynasty, was ultimately victorious and retained control of France, except for Calais (later lost in 1558) and the Channel Islands (which had historically formed part also of the Duchy of Normandy). English and British monarchs continued to prominently call themselves kings of France, and the French fleur-de-lis was included in the royal arms. This continued until 1802, by which time France no longer had any monarch, having become a republic. The Jacobite claimants, however, did not explicitly relinquish the claim. After the collapse of the Commonwealth in 1660, Charles II was restored to the thrones of England, Ireland and Scotland. Although James was the heir presumptive, it seemed unlikely that he would inherit the Crown, as Charles was still a young man capable of fathering children. [29] On 31 December 1660, following his brother's restoration, James was created Duke of Albany in Scotland, to go along with his English title, Duke of York. [30] Upon his return to England, James prompted an immediate controversy by announcing his engagement to Anne Hyde, the daughter of Charles's chief minister, Edward Hyde. [31] Coulombe, Charles (5 March 2019). "The forgotten canonisation Cause of King James II". Catholic Herald . Retrieved 20 June 2019. Prince Joseph Wenzel of Liechtenstein, born 24 May 1995 in London – the first heir in the Jacobite line born in the British Isles since James III and VIII, The Old Pretender, in 1688.There was another truce in 1396 when Richard II married Isabella of Valois, a daughter of King Charles VI of France, thus marking the end of the second phase. Peace did not last long however, as, in 1399, Henry IV usurped Richard's throne while Richard was away in Ireland, thus provoking French hostility in 1403 which marked the beginning of the third phase of the war. died of convulsions [178] and buried in Westminster Abbey on 8 October (Old Style) as "The Lady Charlotte-Marie, daughter to the Duke of York" [180] In 1066, several rival claimants to the English throne emerged. Among them were Harold Godwinson (recognised as king by the Witenagemot after the death of Edward the Confessor), Harald Hardrada (King of Norway who claimed to be the rightful heir of Harthacnut) and Duke William II of Normandy (vassal to the King of France, and first cousin once-removed of Edward the Confessor). Harald and William both invaded separately in 1066. Godwinson successfully repelled the invasion by Hardrada, but ultimately lost the throne of England in the Norman conquest of England.

James VII and II (14 October 1633 O.S. – 16 September 1701) [a] was King of England and Ireland as James II and King of Scotland as James VII [4] from the death of his elder brother, Charles II, on 6 February 1685. He was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. He was the last Catholic monarch of England, Scotland and Ireland. His reign is now remembered primarily for conflicts over religious tolerance, but it also involved struggles over the principles of absolutism and the divine right of kings. His deposition ended a century of political and civil strife in England by confirming the primacy of the English Parliament over the Crown. [5]Main articles: Monmouth Rebellion and Argyll's Rising James portrayed c. 1685 in his role as head of the army, wearing a general officer's state coat On 6 May 1682, James narrowly escaped the sinking of HMS Gloucester, in which between 130 and 250 people perished. [71] James argued with the pilot about the navigation of the ship before it ran aground on a sandbank, and then delayed abandoning ship, which may have contributed to the death toll. [72] Return to favour [ edit ] This house descended from Edward III's third surviving son, John of Gaunt. Henry IV seized power from Richard II (and also displaced the next in line to the throne, Edmund Mortimer (then aged 7), a descendant of Edward III's second son, Lionel of Antwerp). Following the death of Sweyn Forkbeard, Æthelred the Unready returned from exile and was again proclaimed king on 3 February 1014. His son succeeded him after being chosen king by the citizens of London and a part of the Witan, [21] despite ongoing Danish efforts to wrest the crown from the West Saxons.

The Dauphin was crowned as King Charles VII of France at Reims on 17 July 1429, largely through the martial efforts of Joan of Arc, who believed it was her mission to free France from the English and to have the Dauphin Charles crowned at Reims. [10] [11] In 1435, the Duke of Burgundy, released from his obligations to Henry VI by a papal legate, [12] recognised Charles VII as the rightful king of France. [13] The defection of this powerful French noble marked the decline of Henry's de facto reign over France. [14] The dual monarchy came to an end with the capture of Bordeaux by Charles VII's forces on 19 October 1453 following their final victory at the Battle of Castillon (17 July 1453), thus bringing the Hundred Years' War to a conclusion. The English were expelled from all of the territories which they had controlled in France, with the sole exception of Calais. Charles VII had thus established himself as the undisputed king of almost all of France. The main feature of Henry IV's reign in England was internal strife and rebellion, and as a result, Henry V took part in battles from an early age. His first test in battle was in the Welsh wars: Henry fought at the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403. He took a Welsh arrow in the lower part of his face; it passed through his jaw and out the other side. Henry's knights were charging the Welsh positions, so in spite of his wound, Henry refused to leave the field and the English won the day. Following the decisive Battle of Assandun on 18 October 1016, King Edmund signed a treaty with Cnut (Canute) under which all of England except for Wessex would be controlled by Cnut. [23] Upon Edmund's death just over a month later on 30 November, Cnut ruled the whole kingdom as its sole king for nineteen years.English stained glass window from c. 1350–77, showing the coat of arms of Edward III, which featured the three lions of England quartered with the fleurs-de-lys of France. [1] James allowed Roman Catholics to occupy the highest offices of his 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. [99] Edward Petre, James's Jesuit confessor, was a particular object of Anglican ire. [100] When the King's Secretary of State, the Earl of Sunderland, began replacing office-holders at court with "Papist" favourites, James began to lose the confidence of many of his Anglican supporters. [101] Sunderland's purge of office-holders even extended to the King's brothers-in-law (the Hydes) and their supporters. [101] Roman Catholics made up no more than one-fiftieth of the English population. [102] In May 1686, James sought to obtain a ruling from the English common-law courts that showed he had the power to dispense with Acts of Parliament. He dismissed judges who disagreed with him on this matter, as well as the Solicitor General, Heneage Finch. [103] The case of Godden v. Hales affirmed his dispensing power, [104] with eleven out of the twelve judges ruling in the king's favour. [105] 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, 9th Earl of Argyll. [83] Monmouth and Argyll both began their expeditions from Holland, where James's nephew and son-in-law, the Prince of Orange, had neglected to detain them or put a stop to their recruitment efforts. [84] Sowerby, Scott (2013). Making Toleration: The Repealers and the Glorious Revolution. ISBN 978-0-674-07309-8.