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00:04The Stuarts, a bloody reign, is an evocation of the extraordinary era, when these four Stuart Kings lived through turbulent
00:15times.
00:19Catholic versus Protestant.
00:22Parliament against King.
00:25The English Civil War.
00:28Europe torn apart by religious conflict.
00:32The plague. The Great Fire of London.
00:36And finally, a Catholic King fled his country and his throne.
00:47James II, the Catholic King of a Protestant country, was a disaster waiting to happen.
00:52The Stuarts' reign had begun with James I, then Charles I. Their belief in the divine right of kings ultimately
01:00led to their downfall.
01:02At the Restoration, Charles II became a popular, if outrageous, monarch. The kingdom remained simmering with Catholic versus Protestant sentiment.
01:11King James II was a last, desperate attempt at a Stuart monarchy.
01:16I think history is very tough on James II. He was a very brave, headstrong figure, a very good soldier,
01:24very good admiral.
01:25But unfortunately, being so pig-headedly Roman Catholic was the undoing of him.
01:31He goes on an all-out, very rapid process of Catholicisation. This completely wrecks the popular base of his powers
01:41he'd enjoyed in his first year.
01:43He was in some ways a very competent person, but he threw it away for no particular reason, but it
01:51was absolutely extraordinary.
01:52James II just thought he was going to do his bit as a Catholic king, and it went spectacularly wrong.
02:20King Charles II died on the 6th of February 1685.
02:24He had ruled over England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland for a quarter of a century, following the restoration of the
02:31monarchy after the collapse of Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth.
02:34Charles had converted to the Catholic faith on his deathbed, and he would be succeeded by his younger brother, King
02:40James II, a man who had been Catholic for nearly two decades.
02:45In a country that was now officially Protestant, this was a grave concern.
02:50James II's reign would not last long.
02:57In this series we've examined the reign of the four Stuart monarchs through the lives of the Wynne family, who
03:03lived here at Gwydir Castle in North Wales.
03:06The Wynnes owned hundreds of acres of land surrounding the castle, and they prospered enormously during the Stuart era.
03:13It all began with John Wynne, who inherited the Wynne estate in 1580 during the reign of the earliest Stuart
03:20monarch, King James I.
03:23John would be knighted, and the family would be honoured with the title of Baronet.
03:27You.
03:28During King Charles I's reign, Gwydir was overseen by John Wynne's son, Sir Owen and Sir Richard.
03:34It was at this point that the connection between the Wynne family and the ruling Stuart dynasty was strongest of
03:40all, as Sir Richard Wynne was a close personal friend of King Charles I.
03:44But then, civil war broke out, and the King was beheaded.
03:50Sir Richard Wynne never recovered and died just a few months after he witnessed his friend and King being publicly
03:57executed.
03:58Sir Owen Wynne had to care for the estate with his wife, Lady Grace, during the challenging period of Oliver
04:05Cromwell's rule.
04:06With the restoration of the monarchy and the return of King Charles II, the Wynnes would prosper once again.
04:12This time, with Sir Owen's son, Sir Richard Wynne the Younger, back in the restored royal court.
04:18However, Sir Richard Wynne the Younger had no male heirs, meaning the estate passed to his daughter, Mary, known to
04:27everyone as Mally.
04:28Along with her grandmother, Lady Grace, it was her job to maintain the Wynne estate in the new era of
04:35the restoration.
04:38Lady Sarah dies of the plague in 1671, she's very young, and then in 1674, at the age of 39,
04:45Sir Richard dies as well, so it's too young.
04:48And that means that they only have one child, the lovely Lady Mary, and at the age of 17, she
04:54is suddenly the heiress of a vast estate.
05:00And the person who becomes the sort of grand choreographer of all of this is her grandmother, Lady Grace Wynne,
05:10who survives as the matriarch, this powerful figure of the past.
05:16And she brokers marriage deal after marriage deal until she finds the one that is acceptable.
05:23And the one that's acceptable turns out to be the young Lord Willoughby Derisby, Robert Barty.
05:31Mally married Robert Barty in 1678, later the Duke of Ancaster and Member of Parliament.
05:38The baronet suit that the Wynne family had gained during the reign of King James I could not be transferred
05:44to the female line, and so that was given to a junior branch of the Wynne family.
05:49And the Bertys acquired the Goodyear estate.
05:53From that moment, the direct connection of the Wynne's to the land and the landscape and the people of North
06:00Wales stops because it becomes a secondary estate.
06:05It becomes an additional part of the Willoughby Derisby Empire, which was in itself quite huge.
06:11They were a Lincolnshire family based at Grimsthorpe Castle.
06:16Lord Willoughby Derisby goes on to become the Earl and then the Duke of Ancaster and Carstephan, so he becomes
06:25very important.
06:27The Wynne family, once so powerful, was now losing influence and status.
06:32And so were the Stuarts.
06:38For most of his life, King James II had never expected to become king.
06:43He'd been born in St. James's Palace in London in 1633, the second son of King Charles I and his
06:51wife Henrietta Maria.
06:53James held the title of the Duke of York from birth.
06:57During the English Civil War, he'd been confined by Parliament to his birthplace, St. James's Palace, while his father fought
07:04a losing battle with the Royalist forces.
07:07At the age of 15, James managed to sneak away from his confines, disguised as a woman,
07:12and made it all the way to the Hague in the Netherlands.
07:16Continental Europe would be where James would spend much of his life.
07:20When his father was executed in 1649, when James was only 16, his elder brother was proclaimed king by the
07:28Royalists and the Parliaments of Scotland and Ireland.
07:31Charles was even crowned in Scotland in 1651, but the Stuart family was unable to reclaim England, and eventually Oliver
07:41Cromwell prevailed, becoming the undisputed ruler of a new Commonwealth.
07:52Charles and his brother James sought exile in France, their mother's homeland, and it was during this time abroad that
07:59James was exposed to the beliefs and the ceremonies of the Catholic religion.
08:04As time went by, he was drawn to that faith with greater and greater conviction.
08:11James even served in the French army, but France chose to ally itself with Oliver Cromwell.
08:17The Stuart family made an alliance with Spain as a result, and James switched over to the Spanish forces and
08:25battled his previous French colleagues.
08:30James learned to be a soldier, and he'd fought first for the French and then for the Spanish.
08:34He'd fought for the French until he was driven out of the French army by the treaty by which Cromwell
08:40allied with France against Spain.
08:44But he just flipped over and went and fought for the Spanish side.
08:49And in fact, in the last of the great battles of the new model army, back in the dunes, up
08:55in France and Belgium, the English armies of Cromwell, one of the people fighting against them was James.
09:01He was on the battlefield.
09:07James was considered a brave fighter and was on the brink of accepting the rank of admiral in the Spanish
09:14navy when the collapse of Cromwell's protectorate in England rapidly changed those Stuart prospects.
09:20James declined the Spanish offer.
09:23Within months, his brother would reclaim the English throne.
09:27James returned to London and was soon appointed Lord High Admiral of the Navy.
09:32He became one of his brother's closest advisors and was widely praised for his tireless efforts to extinguish the great
09:40fire of London.
09:42But in private, his religious allegiances were shifting.
09:45His wife, Anne Hyde, had converted to the Catholic religion almost as soon as the couple had returned to London.
09:52By the late 1660s, James had converted as well.
10:00We now know that James was formally received in the Catholic Church in 1668.
10:05He continues to attend Protestant services for a few years, but news about his going privately to Catholic mass, Catholic
10:15confessors and so on, was leaking out.
10:18And by 1676, James comes out.
10:21So then you have a crisis that the heir to the throne is going to be a Catholic.
10:27Therefore, there is a huge political campaign to prevent it.
10:31Well, I think history is very tough on James II.
10:34We tend to forget all about him except the disaster of his three years as a king.
10:40He was a very brave, headstrong figure.
10:44He was a very good soldier, very good admiral, and had fought bravely, and he had a lot of qualities.
10:52But unfortunately, being so pig-headedly Roman Catholic was the undoing of him.
11:071673 was a critical year in the life of the future King James II.
11:12His first wife, Anne Hyde, who converted to the Catholic faith long before him, died in 1671, and James was
11:19about to marry his second wife, Mary of Medina.
11:231673 was also the year of the Test Act.
11:26This was a penal law voted in by Parliament, and it required all civil and military officials to take an
11:32oath that declared their allegiance to the Anglican Church.
11:36James was in an impossible position.
11:39He couldn't betray his principles and make such an oath.
11:42He refused, resigned as Lord High Admiral.
11:45Well, there had been rumours abounding that he converted to the Catholic faith, and he was now married to a
11:51Catholic bride from Italy.
11:52Those rumours now seemed confirmed by James' refusal to make that oath required by the Test Act.
12:02The difficulty with James II was everyone knew he was Catholic.
12:06It was not something he could hide, and not something he wanted to hide, either.
12:10I mean, obviously, when push came to shove at the Test Act, he had to just resign his commission as
12:17Admiral.
12:18And that meant he was okay, because he didn't have to do any signing, he didn't have to do any
12:22oathing.
12:26The fact that James' elder brother, King Charles II, had no legitimate heirs with his wife, Catherine of Braganza, that
12:32meant James was next in line for the throne.
12:35He became the focus of numerous conspiracy theories.
12:38Many suspected there were plots to assassinate Charles, replace him with James.
12:44Anti-Catholic sentiment rose again across the country.
12:49Fairly soon after the Test Acts and the sheer scale of the number of people who resigned, which took people
12:55by surprise, they had no idea they would have so many people who were secret Catholics.
13:00And the great anxiety of what will happen if a Catholic does become king, you begin to get people who
13:06started to claim that there was a conspiracy at the top of government to assassinate Charles,
13:13to hasten James' accession to the throne.
13:17This is called the Popish Plot.
13:19And the claim that there were a large number of people who were conspiring to assassinate the king.
13:25And that if James didn't know about it, he was turning a blind eye to it.
13:30And in any case, he was the beneficiary of what they were doing.
13:33And the way to prevent the assassination of the king and the succession of the Catholic ruler was to pass
13:39an act that would mean that the Catholics couldn't benefit from the assassination of the king.
13:43I mean, if there was a law which prevented a Catholic successor, there's no point in killing the existing king,
13:49particularly one who had been fairly lenient, you know, in his attitude to the Catholic population.
13:58To soothe the worried public, King Charles II arranged for James' daughter Mary to marry the Protestant William of Orange.
14:05James reluctantly consented to the match.
14:10The marrying of William of Orange, who was of royal British blood, and therefore had a potential claim to James'
14:19elder daughter, gave a potential focus now for those who were just not prepared to tolerate a Catholic king.
14:30This was not enough, however, to relieve the growing hysteria in the country and in Parliament.
14:35In 1679, the Exclusion Bill was introduced into the House of Commons.
14:40If passed, it would have prevented James from inheriting the throne because he was Catholic.
14:46The Exclusion Bill was also having an impact at Gwydir Castle.
14:51Mally Wynne had married, or Bertie, Lord Willoughby Derresby the previous year.
14:56He had tried unsuccessfully for election into Parliament.
14:59Mally Wynne and her grandmother, Lady Grace, eagerly await correspondence from him as unrest spreads across the country at the
15:08thought of King Charles II's brother, James, becoming the first Catholic monarch.
15:21My lady, my lady.
15:24Thank you, Tal.
15:32Poor Tal.
15:33Are there no others that could deliver your letters, Grandmama?
15:36The years, Aunt Tal, have not rendered him past use.
15:40I know I cannot conceive of Gwydir without him, but surely there are others who can share his burden.
15:47Master Williams has a son.
15:48A boy.
15:49He is 19.
15:53How fares your husband?
15:56Is Robert recovered from his disappointment?
15:59He resolves to stand again in the next election.
16:03Though when that will be, the exclusionists are much in the ascendancy.
16:08Even if the bill passes through the Commons, it will fail in the laws.
16:12Oh, I pray it is so.
16:14The Duke of York will be king, child.
16:16Fooled are he be.
16:18Not in my time, I pray.
16:21But does the Duke not abide by his conscience?
16:25His principles?
16:27Principles are an over-admired thing.
16:31I wonder, though, at the exclusionist mind.
16:35Can the law alter what God has settled?
16:38If Parliament can choose itself a king, why not a tenant his lord?
16:44It pulls at society's very order, I fear.
16:48I suppose Master Williams can learn the duties of a gatekeeper.
16:55They grow so fast, the young.
17:02Let us see if we can over-pace Tal and tell him of his new apprentice.
17:12The bill bitterly divided the Commons.
17:15Indeed, parts of the modern British parliamentary system
17:18can be set to date from this dispute.
17:21Those who backed the exclusion bill became known as the Whigs.
17:24Those against became known as the Tories.
17:27The bill was finally defeated in 1681,
17:30when it was rejected by the House of Lords.
17:36Clearly, the failure of exclusion
17:38and the revenge which is taken by the regime
17:43in dismissing so many prominent supporters of exclusion
17:47from their positions will produce, as it always has in history,
17:51you know, some people who over-react
17:54and think the only solution is to assassinate Charles and James.
17:59There's a lot of talk.
18:00There's not at all clear how much action there is
18:02to plan to intercept him as he returns to London
18:06from the races in Newmarket.
18:07But, in fact, they return early,
18:10and so the plot hadn't matured.
18:12But when you have plots,
18:14there are always people going to betray them
18:16because you can't make a plot work without a lot of people knowing,
18:21and if a lot of people know,
18:22it's increasingly likely somebody will know who will betray it,
18:26and that's what happens.
18:29The botched assassination attempt on the Stewart brothers in 1683
18:33provoked a wave of sympathy for James.
18:36Several Whig opponents were implicated
18:38and James's position was strengthened further
18:40as a result of their fall.
18:43The Catholic Duke of York would indeed be king.
18:58King James II was crowned on April the 23rd, 1685,
19:03but almost immediately he faced a rebellion
19:05from his own nephew, the Duke of Monmouth.
19:08Monmouth was the eldest illegitimate son of King Charles II.
19:11He proclaimed himself the true king in Lyme Regis in Dorset.
19:16And his Monmouth rebellion attempted to overthrow King James II.
19:21Here at Gwydir, the situation was followed especially closely
19:25because Mallie's husband, Robert Bertie, was a captain
19:28and was now fighting on behalf of King James
19:31in the attempt to swiftly crush the rebellion.
19:36It gives me great joy, dear husband, to hear of your efforts in London
19:40and the Commons on behalf of our new king.
19:43There is great rejoicing here at Grimsthorpe as well.
19:46This Sunday gone, the parson even read from the pulpit His Majesty's words,
19:51which I thought very fine and noted well.
19:54I shall make it my endeavour to preserve this government,
19:58both in church and state, as it is by law established,
20:02as I shall never depart from the rights and prerogative of the crown,
20:06so I shall never invade any man's property.
20:10The parson gave it much import,
20:12the word of a king being more secure by far than any mutable law.
20:20Lord Willoughby-Darrisby is holding office under James II,
20:24but also, interestingly, he's captain of a troop of horse under King James,
20:31fighting at the Battle of Sedgwick in 1685,
20:34so against the Duke of Monmouth in the Monmouth Rebellion.
20:37That's very interesting.
20:41The Monmouth Rebellion was quickly dealt with,
20:44as was another rebellion in Scotland that occurred at the same time,
20:48known as Argyll's Rising, led by the Earl of Argyll.
20:52These two rebellions had been coordinated together,
20:55but neither of them were able to drum up enough volunteers in the end.
20:58Both the Duke of Monmouth and the Earl of Argyll were captured and executed.
21:04The rebellions were put down with ease, but they deepened James' insecurities.
21:09He strengthened his army and put loyal men in charge of the regiments.
21:13This might have eased his worries, but the actions caused alarm in Parliament.
21:17A standing army of such size was not a tradition,
21:20and many of the chosen commanders were Catholics.
21:24This placed Mary's husband, Lord Willoughby's position as captain,
21:28who had been under threat.
21:32Is that you in there, boy?
21:34Forgive me, my lady.
21:36Thought it was young Williams.
21:37I can have these chambers readied.
21:39No, no.
21:41Well, perhaps just the fire.
21:43Tal?
21:44Yes, my lady.
21:46Will you not sit a moment?
21:48Well, I know you did so with my grandmother from time to time.
21:50Perhaps in her memory?
22:06And how is Master Williams proving?
22:08Tardy. Off in the need of a bath.
22:12I can see why you and my grandmama got on so.
22:17You were a soldier, were you not?
22:19For the martyred king?
22:22We have always been loyal servants to the Crown, this family.
22:26My husband's likewise.
22:29He's been turned out of his employment as captain.
22:33The king is displeased with the militia.
22:36He desires a standing army, with officers he can trust.
22:41Though Robert led a troop of horse against Monmouth in 85,
22:45he is not of the popish faith, nor are his brothers.
22:50The king has cleared the army of our whole family.
22:54I am sorry, my lady.
22:57We were only ever loyal.
23:00But our hope for advance now seems quite remote.
23:04The gunpowder plot of 1605 has seemed like a last desperate attempt
23:09to return a Catholic monarch to the throne.
23:11But now, with King James II, the seemingly impossible had happened.
23:16The new king's royal court was soon dominated by Catholics.
23:19A representative from Rome was welcomed for the first time
23:23since the days of Mary I, over a century before.
23:26In May 1686, James sought a ruling from the courts
23:30to show he had the power to dispense with acts of parliament.
23:33He fired judges who disagreed with him.
23:36The following year, he made a new declaration of indulgence,
23:39announcing religious toleration, including for the English Catholic minority,
23:44and ordered it be read for every pulpit in the land.
23:47The man thought to be the instigator of the Declaration of Indulgence
23:51was William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania
23:54and member of a new religious movement
23:57that had arisen during Stuart rule, Quakerism.
24:00Penn went on a tour of the country
24:02to promote James' Declaration of Indulgence,
24:05but it was fiercely resisted by the Anglican clergy.
24:11James overplays his hand.
24:13He wants to give Catholics a lot of power
24:16so that they can demonstrate they can use it responsibly,
24:19so that they can show they can be Catholics
24:21who will live in peace with their Protestant neighbours.
24:24So he goes on an all-out, very rapid process of Catholicisation
24:29of local government, of the civil service.
24:33He's determined to reverse the penal laws.
24:36He's got to find people who will do his bidding who are Protestants,
24:41and so the Anglican establishment are pushed aside,
24:44and lots of Quakers and Presbyterians and others
24:47are pressed into service to be nominated for Parliament,
24:51and he changes the conditions of elections in towns
24:55so that the town councils will elect MPs
24:59and not the general electorate.
25:00He narrows the franchise, and then, of course,
25:03he himself nominates the people who will be the town councillors.
25:06It is an extraordinary, extraordinary thing.
25:09And he calls in every single existing MP one by one
25:13and asks them if they will support the repeal of the Penal Laws
25:18and the Test Acts, and they all say no.
25:21So he has to go to these even more desperate lengths,
25:24and this completely wrecks the popular base of his power
25:31that he'd enjoyed in his first year.
25:35The Archbishop of Canterbury, along with six other bishops,
25:39defied the King's orders.
25:40The seven bishops, as they were known,
25:43were soon arrested, taken to the Tower of London.
25:46But their acts of resistance galvanised the public
25:49in an unexpected manner.
25:51The bishops were eventually acquitted at their trial,
25:54and this meant jubilant scenes up and down the nation,
25:57embarrassing the King.
25:59With each passing month of his reign,
26:02James seemed to mimic and exceed the example
26:05of his executed father more and more.
26:07His attempts to rule as an absolute monarch were being fiercely resisted.
26:12His reign, that had started with enthusiasm, general goodwill,
26:17was coming to a crashing end.
26:23I think he believed it was his duty as a Catholic prince
26:27to push forward the Catholic agenda in this country.
26:31He strayed into parts of life that were very threatening to the establishment.
26:36He got involved in the election of fellows at Magdalen College Oxford,
26:41and it became a cause célèbre,
26:44with very important influential people being put into prison
26:47because they disagreed with him.
26:50And at the end of the day,
26:53I think he thought his powers as a monarch were greater than they were.
26:57He hadn't taken on board the lessons of the civil wars,
27:00the fact that the Stuarts weren't able to just behave as they wished.
27:10On the 10th of June 1688, King James and his wife, Mary of Medina, had a son.
27:16According to the rules of primogeniture,
27:18this child was due to inherit the throne.
27:20But James already had two daughters from his first marriage,
27:24Mary and Anne, and they'd been raised Protestant
27:27according to the wishes of King Charles II.
27:29The people just about tolerated James' pro-Catholic rule
27:33because they knew his only possible successors were his Protestant daughters.
27:37But now, with the baby, there was a real threat of a permanent Catholic dynasty.
27:42And to many in the church and across the country,
27:45this was simply unacceptable.
27:48And there's another pretty intriguing twist to this story.
27:51The child born to King James II and Mary of Medina
27:54was rumoured to be an imposter.
27:56The story went that the royal baby was stillborn
27:59and another child was smuggled in to replace him
28:02and ensure a Catholic succession.
28:06When James II's second wife, Mary of Medina, had a son,
28:11even that wasn't enough.
28:13I mean, clearly that boy should have been king in the law of succession.
28:17But the Protestant establishment managed to say
28:21that the baby had been smuggled in in a bedpan.
28:23It wasn't really the rightful heir to the throne.
28:27And there was a ready-made heir in William and Mary and their line.
28:38King James II knew he had a problem on his hands.
28:41He published testimonies of numerous witnesses
28:43who'd been present at the birth of his son.
28:46He also made plans to pack the next parliament
28:48with his supporters and cement his grip on power.
28:52But then news reached him of a fresh challenge to his authority.
28:56William of Orange, the husband of James's Protestant daughter Mary,
29:00was coming to England with an invasionary force.
29:03What became known as the Glorious Revolution had begun.
29:11They persuaded William and Mary that they were being cut out of their lawful rights
29:17by this tender child and they should come to England
29:20to insist on their rights to a full public inquiry
29:24into the legitimacy of the new Prince of Wales.
29:29And William is willing to do that
29:32because William is fighting an all-out war against Louis XIV
29:36and he desperately wants English resources.
29:39He wants English troops and above all, English money.
29:44Now the contender was William,
29:46who saw England as a very, very useful ally,
29:49particularly its wealth and its navy,
29:51in his perpetual battle against Louis XIV's France.
29:54So that's why he was prepared to do it.
29:57It wasn't out of any great pride or whatever.
30:00It was purely practical.
30:01He wanted to have the English on side against France
30:05in the great struggle against the Catholic King.
30:14William of Orange certainly had pedigree.
30:17He'd been involved in several battles with the Catholic King of France
30:20and he was seen across Europe as a storage defender,
30:24of the Protestant faith.
30:25His armada of 463 ships carried 15,000 fighting men across the Channel.
30:32William landed his forces at Torbay on the 5th of November, 1688.
30:38Eighty-three years after Guy Fawkes' attempt
30:40to end the rule of Stuart Kings had failed,
30:44another attempt on another king, James, was about to begin.
30:48And this time, it wasn't going to fail.
30:59The glorious revolution is sometimes known as the bloodless revolution.
31:04While that's not literally the case, it certainly was very low on casualties.
31:08When William of Orange's forces arrived on the English coast,
31:12the army of King James II that they were up against was twice the size.
31:16But William knew he had support among the English and his strategy was perfect.
31:22He had gathered enough finances during his preparations for the war to pay his soldiers for three months in advance,
31:29meaning they were happy to delay any battle.
31:32William's patience paid off as James' troops soon started to defect.
31:38An anti-Catholic riot spread across the land.
31:40The brief reign of James II was collapsing, and he knew it.
31:49Lord Willoughby Derresby advised his wife Mally to seek refuge in the relative safety of Bridere Castle,
31:54as support for William of Orange was spreading.
32:01No running, Elizabeth! What did I say?
32:10How long will my lady and the children be in residence?
32:13As long as my husband deems it necessary for our safety.
32:17A general insurrection, is it?
32:19How do you perceive the local sentiment?
32:23The King jailed our Lord Bishop. Some might mark that in his favour, others less.
32:28But do you detect any general inclination?
32:31He ought not to have done it, my lady.
32:35My husband is for the Duke of Orange.
32:37He marches on York with his brothers, and his uncle stays at court so the family can claim loyalty,
32:42should the enterprise go awry.
32:45But what then of Robert?
32:47Any letters come, I shall have them brought at once.
32:51Day or night.
33:01James' real problem lies in the fact that he's relying on certain loyalties that are no longer intact.
33:08His own children, the two daughters Mary and Anne, have been persuaded to put their Protestantism above their duties as
33:18daughters.
33:19And this, of course, is a devastating blow to James when he finds this out.
33:24And also, some of his finest generals have made it clear that they will fight against the king rather than
33:29for him, including John Churchill, who becomes the first Duke of Marlborough, who had been really the instrument who had
33:35defeated Monmouth at the Battle of Sedgmore three years earlier.
33:39Maybe it was because he was a Protestant and he couldn't bear to help a Catholic.
33:44But James was correct to say that he had taken him from an obscure page boy, given him a commission
33:50and helped him on his way.
33:51And now this young, brilliant commander was fighting against him.
33:57When William arrives, James' commanders are career mercenaries, they're not Catholics.
34:03They do what mercenaries always do.
34:05They make a calculation on whether they think they're going to win.
34:10And James is having some sort of nervous breakdown.
34:14He has incessant nosebleeds, which are clearly hypertension.
34:18He's clearly behaving irrationally.
34:21And I think the professional soldiers like John Churchill, the future Duke of Marlborough, they look at their commander in
34:28chief and they think, this is not a guy I want to serve with.
34:31To have your daughters side against you in a matter really of life and death and of your dynasty's future.
34:39And to have those who you've made from nothing into people of great substance, it must have been devastating on
34:46a personal level.
34:47But there was always the thought during his remaining years that, well, look what happened to Charles II.
34:52He had come back against the odds.
34:54So we know it never happened.
34:56But there were a lot of people in England who were playing a double game, communicating with James in secret,
35:03just in case he did come back, because they didn't want to end up being beheaded.
35:18They've taken York.
35:21The northern nobles are declaring for William.
35:25The king marches west to meet the prince with 40,000 men.
35:30Though Robert says that number is continually diminished.
35:34Whole armies are abandoning the king's cause.
35:37Day by day, Prince William's army grows.
35:41All seems to be happening with great speed, my lady.
35:44Well, Robert is very hopeful.
35:58Unwilling to make the compromises that might have saved his reign, James ready to himself to flee the country.
36:04He ordered his unreliable army to disband.
36:08His wife and baby son left for France in early December.
36:12And when it came his turn to follow, James petulantly dumped the great seal in the Thames.
36:18Without it, no lawful parliament could be called.
36:21James fled to France to join his family.
36:23And William let him go.
36:32It is done.
36:34The king has fled to France.
36:36The queen and the prince of Wales too.
36:39With scarce a battle or bloodshed.
36:41Will we be making arrangements for your return to Grimstorp, the lady?
36:45We shall.
36:46All too well.
36:48These knees aren't much up to chasing the young ones.
36:51They have been most contented here.
36:53As have I.
36:57King James' escape to France was actually a total farce.
37:01The yacht that was meant to take him across the Channel was boarded by English fishermen.
37:05They had no idea who he was.
37:06They thought he was a Jesuit spy.
37:08He was kept prisoner for a week before the misunderstanding was rectified.
37:13And he was even returned to London.
37:17To William's intense rage, he's brought back by some fishermen in Faversham.
37:22So he has to be allowed to escape a second time.
37:25And this time, you know, the roads are kept clear and the orders are under no circumstances fined him.
37:31So he gets into France and Louis XIV takes him in rather startled at this unexpected defeat he's experienced.
37:39And sets him up with his own court at Saint-Germain near Paris.
37:46Within a matter of weeks, Parliament declared that James had abdicated the throne and left it vacant.
37:54William and Mary were declared joint monarchs.
37:57Just as the promise of a stable succession had been so important to the elevation of James VI to the
38:03throne as James I in 1603,
38:06so it was the peace and security embodied by William and Mary that ultimately secured that crown for them.
38:16I always view 1688 and James II's exile as the defining moment of the change that started with the outbreak
38:25of Civil War in 1642,
38:27where really the status of the crown is subjugated to that of Parliament.
38:33And it's James, because of his three years of intensely unintelligent, prejudiced rule,
38:43he brings it to a head, finally, so that the British Parliament gets the upper hand from then on.
38:56James did not give up. He was planning an attempt to reclaim the throne, just as his elder brother Charles
39:02had done.
39:03With the help of the French, he landed in Ireland and raised an army to seize back the throne.
39:09But he was defeated by William at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.
39:15James fled, never to return to England.
39:22I don't think James II was a natural quitter. It was because of the overwhelming evidence that it was over.
39:27He just misjudged the central tenet of the Protestant establishment in England,
39:32particularly when they looked overseas to France and saw what Louis XIV was doing to the Protestants,
39:38treating them with savagery, people being broken on the wheel, literally broken on a wagon wheel,
39:45or being executed in other ways, or being branded as being Protestants.
39:51And it was so close geographically, and the thought that it might come across the channel to England
39:57meant that there was absolutely no way that what looked suspiciously like Catholic absolutism
40:05could be tolerated by James' people.
40:10James died in exile in 1701, convinced he'd lost his throne because God had punished him for his adultery.
40:17His remains were destroyed during the French Revolution, and so too were his memoirs,
40:22meaning that we don't have an awful lot of his perspective, and we've got rather a lot of the opinions
40:27of his enemies.
40:29James' descendants made attempts to get that throne back.
40:32His son, the reported imposter James Francis Edward, became known as the Old Pretender.
40:39He started a rebellion in 1715, the Jacobite Rising, and tried to restore the exiled Stuart dynasty.
40:46He failed.
40:47There was another attempt in 1719 with Spanish support, but it was just as ineffective.
40:54Then in 1745, King James II's grandson, Bonnie Prince Charlie, made one final shot at the crown.
41:02But the country had moved on.
41:05King James II was the last Stuart King.
41:25The winds span the whole rise and fall of the Stuarts.
41:29Sir John Wynne is knighted in 1606, three years after James I came to the throne, one of the very
41:37first baronets.
41:40Charles I served loyally by Sir Richard Wynne, the second baronet.
41:45The fourth baronet, Richard Wynne the Younger, was chamberlain to the Queen of Charles II.
41:53The brief reign of James II, followed by the glorious revolution in 1688.
42:00And then, in 1689, Lady Mary Wynne, the last of the winds, dies.
42:10Gwydir Castle's glory has also come to an end.
42:35Gwydir Castle's glory has also come to an end.
42:44Those four Stuart men who ruled England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland, each wrestled with similar problems.
42:51The scope, the nature of government was contested at this time as it never was before.
42:57It made their era divisive, often bloody.
43:00But the reigns of the Stuart kings saw the beginnings of the modern British state.
43:06The unification of England and Scotland.
43:09The last death rattles of absolute monarchy.
43:12And the rise of parliament as the dominant power in the land.
43:31The plan in springtime.
43:44The spirit on λλλ° and bonito and demΓ‘s.
44:05Transcription by CastingWords
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