Portal:Scotland/Selected article/Week 21, 2011

King James VII of Scotland (14 October 1633 – 16 September 1701) was King of England and King of Ireland as James II and King of Scotland as James VII, from 6 February 1685. He was the last Catholic monarch to reign over the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Increasingly members of Britain's political and religious elite opposed him as too pro-French, too pro-Catholic, and too much of an absolute monarch.

When he produced a Catholic heir, the tension exploded and leading nobles called on William III of Orange (his son-in-law and nephew) to land an invasion army from the Netherlands. James fled England (and thus abdicated) in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. He was replaced by William of Orange who became king as William III, ruling jointly with his wife (James's daughter) Mary II. Thus William and Mary, both Protestants, became joint rulers in 1689. James made one serious attempt to recover his crowns, when he landed in Ireland in 1689 but, after the defeat of the Jacobite forces by the Williamite forces at the Battle of the Boyne in the summer of 1690, James returned to France. He lived out the rest of his life as a pretender at a court sponsored by his cousin and ally, King Louis XIV.