Assassination: The Royal Family's 1000-Year Curse by David Maislish

Author:David Maislish [Maislish, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Europe, Biography & Autobiography, Royalty, Great Britain, History
ISBN: 9781780031484
Google: mbteLwEACAAJ
Amazon: 1780031483
Publisher: Indepenpress
Published: 2012-08-15T04:00:00+00:00

JAMES II

6 February 1685 – 11 December 1688

Imprisoned with his brother Henry and sister Elizabeth after the fall of Oxford, Royalists helped the 14-year-old James escape to the Netherlands dressed as a girl. He was taken to the court of his mother and older brother in Paris.

After years of exile, James achieved his ambition to attain high military rank. He was commissioned in the army of the King of France, fighting against the Spanish. James acquitted himself well, earning promotion to Lieutenant-General. Then, in 1655, Cromwell agreed to send some of his Ironsides to assist the French. One of the terms of the agreement was that Prince Charles, James and seventeen other prominent Royalists were to be expelled from France. James’s response was to change sides and join the Spanish Army.

Now James fought against the French in Spain’s attempt to relieve the siege of Dunkirk. Almost 18,000 French troops and 2,000 Ironsides faced a Spanish army that included 2,000 English and Irish Royalists, hoped by many to be the core of an army that would invade England and restore the monarchy. The French attacked in what would be known as the Battle of the Dunes because of the fierce assault by one of the Ironside regiments up a 50 metre-high sand dune.

James led his troop of horse, charging several times, but they were outnumbered and endured heavy casualties. In the melee, the French singled out James as the leader of the cavalry. He was struck with blows that would have killed most men, but the attempts to kill him failed. James was saved by the high quality of his armour. The Spanish were defeated. Only 700 of the Royalists survived, and that ended the prospect of an invasion of England.

After his brother was crowned King Charles II, James returned to England. James was a strict, dour man; his interests being confined to warfare, hunting and women. In 1660, to general disapproval, James married the pregnant Anne Hyde25, daughter of the Chancellor. Disapproval, because Anne was a commoner and James was, for the time being at least, heir to the throne. Soon after the child was born, a wave of smallpox struck London, and the baby died as did James’s brother Henry and his sister Mary.

It was at about this time that James found a new mistress, one of his wife’s ladies-in-waiting, Arabella Churchill. She would give birth to four of James’s illegitimate children, all called ‘Fitzjames’ – from fiz, Norman for ‘the son of’, used in England for the surnames of illegitimate children of kings and princes (most of the King’s bastards were called ‘Fitzroy’). Arabella was the daughter of Sir Winston Churchill, an impoverished cavalry officer in Charles I’s defeated Royalist Army who had been heavily fined during the Commonwealth. Churchill was rewarded on the Restoration with a seat in Parliament, a place at court for Arabella and a post for her brother John, who became a page in James’s household. Arabella’s grandfather, John Churchill, had married Sara Winston.

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