James II of England

James II of England, formerly the Duke of York, is depicted as a monarch determined to complete the restoration of royal authority and as a court patron who uses that authority to shape titles, fortunes, and lives. His rule connects public repression to private dynastic calculation: while government tightens its hold on political dissent, royal patents arrange an inheritance that displaces the legitimate heir, Gwynplaine.

Identity and Political Purpose

The novel contrasts James II of England with Charles II of England. The earlier king is described as governing gently, leaving an initially loose political settlement that, in time, tightened. James regards his predecessor’s Restoration as incomplete. His ambition is to restore order more fully and to strengthen the executive authority that had survived the revolution. The narrator characterizes this as the throttling of what remained of the revolution, making the return to order inseparable from the suppression of its political legacy.

That account is delivered in a conspicuously ironic voice. The narrator presents James’s severity as if it were a principled service to society, praising his appointment of Jeffreys and his use of Kirke, while the examples expose the cruelty beneath the language of justice. Kirke’s repeated punishment of a republican, the execution of Lady Lisle despite her son’s opposition to Monmouth, and the burning of a woman who had sheltered a rebel all belong to this portrait of state power. So does the hanging of nineteen burgesses as a warning to a town judged republican. The narrator’s mock approval does not settle the moral question in the king’s favor; it sharpens the contrast between official claims of order and the retaliatory violence used to enforce it.

Royal Display and Patronage

James is also shown cultivating the appearance of a military king. He liked to surround himself with young officers and appeared publicly on horseback in helmet and cuirass, with an enormous wig extending beneath his helmet and over his armor. The description turns royal display into an image of authority that is more theatrical than martial. His public costume and the narrator’s satirical treatment of it complicate the king’s self-presentation as an efficient ruler.

At court, James took a liking to the graceful young Lord David Dirry-Moir, valuing him despite his being the son of a republican. The king’s favor turned that connection into a substantial office: David became a gentleman of the bedchamber, a position carrying an annual salary of one thousand pounds and requiring its holder to sleep near the king when on duty. David also managed the royal horse establishment, including the distribution of grain for the horses, and held responsibilities connected with the king’s racehorses at Newmarket and the wardrobe that supplied ceremonial robes to the Knights of the Garter. These arrangements show the practical reach of court patronage: royal favor brought income, access, and authority over parts of the household.

The Clancharlie Succession

The opportunity to advance David further arose after news spread that the exiled Linnæus, Lord Clancharlie, had died. Reports from Switzerland claimed that he had married Ann Bradshaw, daughter of a regicide, and that she had died giving birth to a son. The rumors were uncertain, but their implication was decisive: if true, the boy would be the legitimate heir. James ended the uncertainty by declaring David the sole heir in default of legitimate issue and having the grant registered in the House of Lords. The patent gave David the titles, rights, and prerogatives of the deceased lord.

The arrangement was not unconditional. David was required to marry Duchess Josiana once she reached a marriageable age. At the time she was only an infant of a few months, already made a duchess by the king. The titles of Clancharlie and Hunkerville, together with the associated marquisate of Corleone in Sicily, thus became part of a carefully arranged transfer: the patent elevated David while binding his future to Josiana. The account emphasizes how royal authority could convert uncertain reports into a formal settlement and make a great inheritance contingent on a royal marriage plan.

The Hidden Heir and the Cost of Royal Power

The succession settlement acquires a darker meaning when the novel later identifies Gwynplaine as the legitimate son of Linnæus, Lord Clancharlie, and Ann Bradshaw. The account states that James had ordered the child sold when he was two years old, after his father’s death, and that the child was later disfigured and put out of the way because he stood to inherit his father’s titles and estates. The king’s earlier declaration that David was heir in the absence of legitimate issue therefore appears not as a neutral response to uncertain rumors but as part of a chain of actions directed against the person whose existence would invalidate that claim.

The consequences extend well beyond a disputed title. Gwynplaine is later discovered living as a performer, raised and trained for fairs and markets rather than protected as an heir. His identity exposes the human cost concealed by the language of patents and succession: the state that confers rank also possesses, in the king’s hands, the power to erase a claimant from public life. The contrast between David’s advancement at court and Gwynplaine’s abandonment makes royal favor and royal violence two operations of the same political system.

Religion, Exile, and Narrative Function

The narrative associates James’s authority with religious seriousness as well as coercive government. It recounts his counsel from the Jesuit preacher le Père la Colombière and presents religious instruction as sustaining him in later exile at Saint Germain. There, after losing his throne, he is described as enduring adversity with dignity, touching for the king’s evil, and conversing with Jesuits. This later image of personal composure does not undo the earlier account of his political actions. Instead, it places the deposed king’s private endurance beside the suffering produced under his rule.

As a character, James is less developed through intimate self-disclosure than through the institutions and people his choices affect. His decisions shape Lord David Dirry-Moir’s court fortune, determine the terms of Josiana’s marriage, and make Gwynplaine’s dispossession possible. The novel thereby uses the king to connect the machinery of restoration, courtly advancement, inherited privilege, and the deliberate removal of a rival heir. His importance lies not only in the authority he exercises but in the way that authority makes political power visible in individual lives.