James II Keeps His Throne

What if James II of England kept his throne? Would he or his descendants have to become Protestant or is it possible for them to be accepted otherwise?What if?
 
I can only think he would have had to have had no male heir for that to happen. At the time he was tolerated because he was old and would die soon.

If he converted that may have attracted some hostility from France, who he was assumed to be in league with.
 
He would need to prove his non-catholic credentials and would have to promise to raise his children as Protestants (as Charles II did for his eldest daughters).

If he did that then he would probably keep his throne. It would however sink the British as it was William III who introduced the Bank of England etc. that enabled the British to win their empire (ironically sometimes at the cost to the Dutch).

Had James continued then Britain's finances would have been in a similar state to the French and we all know were that leads!
 
He would need to prove his non-catholic credentials and would have to promise to raise his children as Protestants (as Charles II did for his eldest daughters).

If he did that then he would probably keep his throne. It would however sink the British as it was William III who introduced the Bank of England etc. that enabled the British to win their empire (ironically sometimes at the cost to the Dutch).

Had James continued then Britain's finances would have been in a similar state to the French and we all know were that leads!
Besides that, if England remains allied to France, it would probably lead to a French domination of the continent. I am not saying that Britain stoped France OTL, but British support was crucial in stopping France )as was the Dutch, Spanish, Austrian, Prussian etc). A French dominated Europe can not be advantages to England, certainly considering that it is likely that France remains strong in both India and Northern America.
 
James losing his throne was more about his lack of judgement and a monarchical temperament which was more suited to a hundred years previously than it was about his Catholicism per se. He was a popular king at his accession, and he squandered an awful lot of goodwill in a remarkably short time by his maladroit political skills. He might have even kept it had he been just prepared to fight for it, instead of suffering some sort of breakdown and then fleeing after the invasion.
 
Well the best way to have James II keep his throne would be to stop William's invasion. Perhaps a surprise storm sinks part of the invasion fleet, including the ship William's on. William dies and with him the threat James being removed from the throne. Mary would be a childless widow with no power in the Netherlands and Anne wouldn't dare make a move without proof that it would succeed.
 
James II & VII would never have converted. So, "James II keeps his throne" (presumably James VII keeps his also, but that's actually a different question) , must needs imply either that the country, for whatever reason, is more comfortable with a Papist prince; or that the Dutch invasion falls over somewhere along the line (A Catholic wind ? Better luck at the Boyne?). In either case, there will be no need for James's descendants to convert.

I imagine the Bank of England would come along much as OTL. Will III had very little to do with it. But the War of Spanish Succession may work out very differently. And we may not have Blenheim Palace.
 
Well, it depends a lot on if the Tory Land Bank gets adopted, as opposed to the Whig notion of a bank based on trade. Which as James was a natural Tory...
 
Yes, it might not be the /same/ Bank of England. Or perhaps even mulitple Banks of XXXX.

An even bigger factor may be the absence of a funded National Debt. The National Debt was largely the result of William's wars. Remove those (or, more realistically, delay the idea of a National Debt) and a Bank of England may look much more like a true trading entity. Which in turn could have significant impact on the East India Company.
 
I must take some issue , though, with the statement that James was a natural Tory. We must remember that words change their meanings. James was certainly a natural conservative. But, back then, in many respects the proto-Tories were not the conservatives. The Tories were the party of the Church of England, and the Restoration settlement, the ones most opposed to popery.

It was not until after the Revolution that the Tories became synonymous with the Jacobites (Strictly speaking , of course, in James's time, there were not Whigs and Tories, but Court and Country parties. It was the Country party (which opposed James and the Court party) which morphed into the Tories.

Relationships between James and the Country would be likely to be fraught.
 
James losing his throne was more about his lack of judgement and a monarchical temperament which was more suited to a hundred years previously than it was about his Catholicism per se. He was a popular king at his accession, and he squandered an awful lot of goodwill in a remarkably short time by his maladroit political skills. He might have even kept it had he been just prepared to fight for it, instead of suffering some sort of breakdown and then fleeing after the invasion.

All too true.

James' problem was that he tried to do launch many unpopular initiatives at once. He 1) pushed an absolutist line that undermined parliamentary power at the same time that 2) he aggressively pushed religious tolerance (which was read as Catholic empowerment). Worst of all, he topped both off with 3) a pro-French line that looked like making England an adjunct to Louis XIV's power.

He could have done one of these things, perhaps, but not all three. Put together, all these policies united a large enough cohort of the gentry and the aristocracy to join in William's conspiracy to overthrow him - and desert his army when he arrived.

And frankly, even had James somehow managed to keep enough of the army together to beat William as he had Monmouth, there would have been some other rebellion before long. Too many of England's powerful had been alienated. The same is true, therefore, even if William meets with an untimely death - these Protestant grandees would find some other way to put Anne or Mary on the throne.

Unfortunately, the lack of good judgment that impelled James to all of these policies ran deep, and that makes it hard to identify a Point of Departure that makes him abandon two or more of these. I think it would have to be an extrinsic cause. For example, something that somehow provokes France to declare war on England.
 
And frankly, even had James somehow managed to keep enough of the army together to beat William as he had Monmouth, there would have been some other rebellion before long. Too many of England's powerful had been alienated. The same is true, therefore, even if William meets with an untimely death - these Protestant grandees would find some other way to put Anne or Mary on the throne.

Agree with all the rest and especially about it being hard to see a convenient POD to extricate James from an eventual crisis point.

Though I'm not so sure about the above bit. I think James would have been in a very strong position if he'd been able to beat William militarily, somehow, and his abortive parliament-packing plan of OTL would most likely have gone through on an khaki gerrymander. Equally, it's worth remembering that, at the basic level, the Protestant grandees were the creatures of William, not the other way round as is often believed; he had already planned the invasion, but wanted it to be legitimised. It was only after the success of the invasion that William had to get into political horse-trading. It's not immediately clear to me who could carry the standard of revolt to anywhere near the level of sophistication that William did. It's worth remembering that William was not only a foreign prince, but married to the heir-but-one, so he both had the might and a decent claim to the right as well.

I'm not saying James would be immune, by any means, but I think this scenario would give him a few years of pretty strong rule, in which he'd be able to build himself up militarily. What happens after that probably depends on who is the standard-bearer of the next revolt, and how they handle it.
 
Would it have helped James if Car II had died a few years earlier ? Perhaps soon after the Exclusion Crisis and Oxford Parliament ? Would a bit more time to work his plans have made them more successful ?
 
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