What did James II do when the people that Parliament invited to England arrived?
Answer: James II, also called (1644–85) duke of York and (1660–85) duke of Albany, (born October 14, 1633, London, England—died September 5/6 [September 16/17, New Style], 1701, Saint-Germain, France), king of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1685 to 1688, and the last Stuart monarch in the direct male line. He was deposed in the Glorious Revolution (1688–89) and replaced by William III and Mary II. That revolution, engendered by James’s Roman Catholicism, permanently established Parliament as the ruling power of England.
James II was the second surviving son of Charles I and Henrietta Maria. He was formally created duke of York in January 1644. During the English Civil Wars he lived at Oxford—from October 1642 until the city surrendered in June 1646. He was then removed by order of Parliament to St. James’s Palace, from which he escaped to the Netherlands in April 1648. He rejoined his mother in France in early 1649. Joining the French army in April 1652, he served in four campaigns under the great French general the vicomte de Turenne, who commended his courage and ability. When his brother Charles II concluded an alliance with Spain against France in 1656 he reluctantly changed sides, and he commanded the right wing of the Spanish army at the Battle of the Dunes in June 1658.
After the restoration of his brother Charles II to the English throne in 1660, James was created duke of Albany. He became lord high admiral and did much to maintain the efficiency and improve the organization of the navy. He also showed considerable interest in colonial ventures; it was on his initiative that New Amsterdam was seized from the Dutch in 1664 and renamed New York in his honour. He commanded the fleet in the opening campaigns of the Second and Third Dutch wars. This was to be his last taste of active military command until 1688.
James’s conversion had little effect on his political views, which were already formed by his reverence for his dead father and his close association with the High Church party. James, in fact, was always more favourable to the Anglican church than was his Protestant brother. He welcomed the prospect of England’s reentering the European war on the side of the Dutch; and he consented to the marriage of his elder daughter, Mary, to the Protestant William of Orange in 1677. For most of his life James was the spokesman of the conservative Anglican courtiers, who believed that his views on monarchy and Parliament coincided with theirs, who found his formal and humourless nature more congenial than Charles’s slippery geniality, and who respected his frank acknowledgment of his religious beliefs.
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