James II (1633-1701) was king of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1685 to 1688. Britain's last Stuart and last Catholic monarch, he granted religious minorities the right to worship. He was deposed by the Glorious Revolution.

Since the Declaration of Rights of 1689 charged him with attempting to "subvert and extirpate the Protestant religion and the laws and liberties of the kingdom," James II has traditionally been treated as a would-be tyrant by older historians. Recent writers have pointed out that his failures were more personal than political. In 1679, in lofty concept of his office, James stated that "the monarchy, ... I thank God, yet has had no dependency on parliaments nor on nothing but God alone." And within the strict letter of the constitution, James was not wrong. James's Catholicism, to which he was converted about 1670, is viewed as a major impediment, for in its cause he committed most of his...