Reign of James II

The Reign of James II is presented as a period in which state policy could enlist the Comprachicos, a child-buying confederation, to conceal or eliminate inconvenient heirs without openly killing them. Their protection under the Crown links the novel’s account of royal power to Gwynplaine’s sale and abandonment: a hidden royal order helps explain why a legitimate heir vanished, and why his eventual return unsettles the succession arranged in his absence.

A Crown's Use of the Comprachicos

Under the House of Stuart, the Comprachicos were not wholly concealed or routinely persecuted. The novel describes a permissive but watchful arrangement: the law did not pursue the confederation with full force, while royal attention left its services available when useful. James II tolerated the group because he made use of it. A trade despised by the court could nevertheless serve the higher purposes of statecraft.

The Comprachicos’ role was to make a person difficult to recognize and thereby facilitate disappearance. In the political logic described by the narrator, this could interrupt a line of descent, suppress a young heir, or make the transfer of titles to a favored claimant easier. Altering an heir’s appearance was treated as a means of achieving what a killing might otherwise accomplish, while leaving the authorities a more deniable route. The confederation’s discretion and silence made it valuable: its members kept royal secrets, in part because their own security depended on retaining the king’s confidence.

The account emphasizes the contradiction between James II’s religious identity and this practical alliance. He is described as devout and hostile to Jews and gipsies, yet favorable to the Comprachicos because their work served royal interests. Their Catholic practices and provision of singers for the Miserere of Allegri further suited the religious culture of the Stuart court. In this portrait, piety does not prevent political cruelty; it coexists with a system that treats children and inheritances as instruments of government.

The Suppressed Clancharlie Heir

The case that gives this policy its personal consequence is Gwynplaine’s. The evidence later read in court identifies him as the legitimate son of Linnæus, Lord Clancharlie and Ann Bradshaw, and heir to his father’s estates and titles. According to the declaration, he was sold at the age of two by order of James II, after his father’s death. Ten pounds sterling was paid to the king as purchase money, alongside concessions and immunities. The order connected the child’s disappearance directly to the Crown rather than leaving it as an isolated crime by private traffickers.

The scheme did not merely conceal a name. Gwynplaine was separated from his inherited identity, raised for a life as a mountebank, and eventually abandoned on the coast of Portland when he was ten. His later recognition as Lord Fermain Clancharlie reverses the intended result: the heir whose disappearance had simplified the transfer of property returns as a claimant whose legitimacy can be established. The contrast between the child’s enforced public identity and his hereditary rank makes the earlier use of the Comprachicos visible as political action, not simply private abuse.

The End of Stuart Protection

The account sets a clear political boundary at 1688, when William III replaced James II and the dynasty changed. James II went into exile; William III, described as having different principles and practices, acted against the Comprachicos and sought to destroy their organization. The confederation’s former protection was therefore contingent rather than secure: a change of sovereign altered the risks faced by a group that had prospered through its usefulness to the previous king.

That change did not undo the effects of James II’s earlier policy. The child’s identity, the lost inheritance, and the royal authorization remained matters to be reconstructed later. The novel’s chronology thus distinguishes the end of a political arrangement from the much slower disclosure of what it had done. A new ruler could oppose the Comprachicos, but only evidence carried forward from the old regime could expose a particular disappearance and restore a particular heir.

The Royal Order and Its Later Consequences

The disclosure depends on a chain of documents and objects. A declaration made aboard the Matutina records the child’s purchase and the circumstances of the ship’s voyage; it was written on the reverse of the royal order that had served as the sellers’ receipt. The order bears the words Jussu regis and the signature Jeffreys. Preserved inside Hardquanonne’s gourd flask, the papers reach the English shore as a message from a doomed ship and become evidence in the later inquiry. The sheriff’s examination of the parchment and the name on the flask connects the written record to Hardquanonne, who recognizes the vessel and is confronted with the account of his actions.

The survival of that evidence is especially pointed because the novel has already described the Admiralty’s system for receiving messages in bottles. Reports from ships could communicate their position, danger, or loss; bottles cast into the sea might reach land quickly or only after years. The Lord High Admiral’s jetsam officer received such containers, and their opening followed an official procedure involving sworn jurors and a signed report. Barkilphedro’s office places him at the threshold between a sealed message and public knowledge. In Gwynplaine’s case, that administrative process allows a secret from James II’s reign to become a matter of law.

Restoration and the Limits of Royal Justification

During Queen Anne’s reign, William Cowper, the Lord Chancellor, examines the case and advises that Gwynplaine be restored to his estates and dignities once Hardquanonne identifies him. Cowper’s memorandum does not simply condemn James II: it invokes monarchical arguments that would justify a king’s power over subjects, while also maintaining that a surviving heir’s title should be returned. The reasoning exposes the instability of a legal order in which royal authority can be invoked both to suppress an inheritance and, later, to recognize it.

Anne, informed of Gwynplaine’s deformity and unwilling to wrong her sister, Duchess Josiana, decides that Josiana should marry the restored heir. The decision converts the recovery of a title into a new dynastic arrangement, while showing how the earlier suppression had affected other lives and claims. Gwynplaine is told that he is a peer, a legislator, and a judge, with an income of £40,000 a year. That sudden elevation cannot erase the childhood imposed on him or restore the years in which his name and inheritance were withheld. The Reign of James II consequently remains present in the novel not only as a past regime, but as the source of a secret whose belated discovery reshapes the lives and status of the people who survived it.