James II

James II’s attempt to reestablish absolutism turned a contested struggle over English political power into the crisis of 1688. Parliament invited William of Orange and James’s Protestant daughter Mary to replace him; when William landed with an army, James’s forces disintegrated and he fled to France. His removal did not settle the conflict at once, but it changed the constitutional balance and undermined royal protection for the Royal African Company’s monopoly on the African slave trade.

Accession and the contest over power

James succeeded his brother Charles II in 1685. Their shared political project was to strengthen royal authority, but the conflict was rooted in a wider contest over economic and political institutions. In the account of the English Civil War, Parliament sought an end to absolutist institutions, while the king sought to reinforce them. The interests ranged beyond the Crown and its formal opponents: merchants who held lucrative local monopolies could support royal power because it protected their privileges, while economic groups who faced weaker monopolies had more reason to favor change.

The first Civil War had already shown that defeating a monarch did not guarantee inclusive government. Parliamentarians under Oliver Cromwell defeated the royalists; Charles was tried and executed in 1649, and the monarchy was abolished. Yet the replacement was Cromwell’s dictatorship, not a lasting pluralist settlement. After his death, the monarchy returned in 1660, and Charles II recovered many privileges stripped from it. James intensified the effort to restore absolutism when he came to the throne in 1685, reviving a conflict whose earlier resolution had proved temporary.

The crisis of 1688

In 1688 James’s attempt to reestablish absolutism created another crisis and another civil war. This time Parliament was more united and organized. Its members invited William of Orange, the Dutch Statholder, and Mary, James’s Protestant daughter, to replace him. William arrived with an army and claimed the throne, but the intended settlement was constitutional monarchy under Parliament, not the substitution of one absolutist ruler for another.

The decisive reversal came quickly. Two months after William landed at Brixham in Devon, James’s army disintegrated and James fled to France. The episode made Parliament’s power to remove a monarch more than a theoretical claim: the succession itself had been changed through political action. In February 1689 Parliament produced the Declaration of Rights, read to William at the session where it offered him the crown. The declaration established constitutional principles and determined the succession in a way that departed from received hereditary rules. Its implication was consequential: if Parliament could remove one monarch and choose a replacement, it could do so again.

Royal prerogative and the African trade

James’s fall also had material consequences for the reach of royal prerogative. Charles II had issued the Royal African Company’s monopoly charter in 1660, and James, then Charles’s brother, was the company’s governor and a major shareholder. The company claimed exclusive control over the lucrative African slave trade, while independent traders known as interlopers tried to buy enslaved people in West Africa and sell them in the Americas. James had assiduously protected the company against these rivals.

In 1689, after James had been removed, the company seized the cargo of an interloper named Nightingale. Nightingale sued. Chief Justice Holt ruled that the seizure was unlawful because the company’s monopoly rested on royal prerogative: monopoly privileges could be created only by statute, Holt reasoned, and statute required Parliament. Before the change in 1688, James could have swiftly removed a judge for such a ruling. Afterward, the company’s claim had to face Parliament rather than depend on the king’s protection.

Petitions turned that shift in authority into a public contest. One hundred and thirty-five petitions from interlopers demanded free access to Atlantic trade. Only five were signed by the interlopers themselves, while seventy-three came from provinces outside London, compared with eight for the company. From the colonies, interlopers gathered twenty-seven petitions to the company’s eleven, and their petitions carried 8,000 signatures against 2,500. The opposition presented its case not only as private commercial interest but as a matter of national interest. The company’s monopoly was abolished in 1698.

Aftermath and historical significance

James’s removal did not end efforts to restore the Stuart monarchy. After his death in 1701, his son James Francis Edward Stuart was recognized as the lawful heir by France, Spain, the pope, and English and Scottish supporters known as Jacobites. An attempt backed by French troops in 1708 failed; further Jacobite revolts followed, including major uprisings in 1715 and 1719. In 1745–46, James’s grandson Charles Edward Stuart made another attempt, but the British army defeated his forces. The repeated challenges show that the settlement of 1688 remained contested even as Parliament’s authority endured.

The book treats the crisis as part of a longer institutional divergence, not as an inevitable march toward inclusive government. Atlantic trade created new wealth, but its political effects depended on earlier differences: English traders gained opportunities beyond the Crown’s control and pressed to restrict royal prerogatives, whereas monarchs in France and Spain could monopolize more overseas trade. In England, conflict and petitioning helped broaden the groups able to influence how the state worked. James’s defeat therefore mattered both as a personal loss of throne and as a turning point in a struggle over who could make the rules—and whether political power could again be concentrated in an unchecked monarch.