Second surviving son of Charles I. and Henrietta Maria, born at the palace of St. James, Oct. 15, 16'33, died at St. Germain, France, Sept. 16, 1701. He was called duke of York at once, but not by patent until 1643. He was about nine years old when the civil war broke out, and was an eye-witness of the battle of Edgehill, where he came near losing his life. He was present at the siege of Bristol in 1643. When Oxford was captured in 1646, James became prisoner to Fairfax.. At a ceremonious visit of the chiefs, of the parliamentary army, Cromwell was the only man who knelt to him. The prince was well treated, and allowed frequent interviews with his father, living most of the time in company with his brother Gloucester and sister Elizabeth, at St. James's, under the guardianship of the earl of Northumberland. He escaped in 1648, and fled to the Netherlands, whence, after a residence in Flanders, he went to Paris in 1649. The same year he accompanied his brother Charles to the island of Jersey, residing there four months.

Returning to the continent, he visited Brussels, Rheenen, the Hague, and Breda. After the triumph of the enemies of the Stuarts in 1651, he entered the French service, distinguishing himself under Turenne. When, in 1655, the relations between England and France became close, James was forced to depart, and he entered the Spanish army, where he fought against the English and French. He was treated with much consideration by the Spaniards. He shared in the benefits of the restoration of his family to the British throne in 1660; and on Sept. 3 of that year he was married to Anne Hyde, daughter of the earl of Clarendon, to whom he had contracted himself the preceding November. She died in 1671, and James married in 1673 Maria Beatrice Eleonora, a princess of the house of Este of Modena, his junior by 25 years. He had become a Catholic while in exile, but did not avow his religion until some years after the restoration (1671). In the wars with Holland he distinguished himself in command of the English fleet. The passage of the test act in 1673 caused him to relinquish all his employments.

He incurred great danger during the time of the popish plot, and when the parliamentary test was adopted in 1678, it was with difficulty that he maintained an exceptional privilege to retain his seat in the house of peers. An effort was made to exclude him from the succession, and Shaftesbury endeavored to prevail upon the grand jury of Middlesex to indict him. The commons passed the exclusion bill, but it was rejected by the peers; it had passed the commons in the preceding parliament, but through a dissolution failed to reach the upper house. James retired to Brussels in 1679, but returned when the king was attacked by illness. He was sent to Scotland, as head of the administration there, and treated the Covenanters with great cruelty. The Oxford parliament, which would have passed the exclusion bill, was dissolved at the commencement of 1681. A reaction now began. James soon returned to England, had much influence at court and in the country, and upheld all those severe measures by which the tory party sought to exterminate the whigs. When Charles II. died, Feb. 6, 1685, James succeeded him. His conduct was arbitrary from the beginning, and the parliament he called was the most servile in English history.

Argyll's invasion of Scotland and Monmouth's invasion of England were subdued with little difficulty, and were followed by unparalleled punishments. He soon broke with his obsequious parliament, as he required the repeal of the test and habeas corpus acts, which were as dear to the tories as to all other of his subjects except the Catholics. He prorogued the parliament from time to time, and ultimately it was dissolved. He set himself systematically to work to effect two ends: the overthrow of the constitutional system of England, and the restoration of the Catholic religion. At first he attempted to use the established church against the dissenters; but finding the Episcopalians would not give him their aid, he sought to gain the dissenters. A great number of illegal measures were adopted. A new court of ecclesiastical commission was erected; a great standing army was created; the privileges of the universities were violated; the test act became a dead letter; corporations were modelled and remodelled, in the hope that a parliament might be packed that would give to the king's doings the forms of law.

In less than three years the king had arrayed all his subjects against him, except the Catholics and a few of the dissenters, the greater part of the dissenting interest siding with the established church, and whigs and tories coalescing. All offices were in the hands of Catholics, or of Protestants ready to do the work of Catholics. The foreign policy of the country was made subservient to that of France, because the support of that country was necessary for the success of James's home policy. The pope and the governments of Spain and Germany were hostile to James's course, because they were alarmed at the encroachments of Louis XIV. Matters were brought to a crisis in June, 1688, by the opposition which the declaration of indulgence encountered. The archbishop of Canterbury and six bishops were sent to the tower, and tried on the charge of libel, for petitioning the king against the order that the declaration should be read in the churches. They were acquitted, but the excitement was without a parallel in English history of that century. On June 10 Queen Mary gave birth to a son, who was afterward known as the pretender (see James Francis Edward Stuart), the popular opinion being that the queen's pregnancy was a sham, and that the child was spurious. This event hastened the revolution.

Men had been restrained from action by the belief that, as James had no male children, the throne must soon pass to his eldest daughter, Mary, wife of William, prince of Orange, who was a Protestant; but the birth of his son dispelled their hopes, and on June 30, 1688, William was invited to invade England, the invitation being signed by the earls of Shrewsbury, Devonshire, and Dan-by, Lord Lumley, Henry Sidney, Edward Russell, and Henry Compton, the suspended bishop of London. Though James was warned of what was going on, both by Louis XIV. and by others, he was taken entirely by surprise when William sailed from Holland with an army of 15,000 men. The invaders landed at Torbay, Nov. 5, and James was soon abandoned by nearly every one, including his daughter Anne. He fled from England, having previously sent away his wife and son, but was detained, and returned to London, much to the regret of his enemies. Every facility for flight being placed in his way, he fled a second time, and reached France. He was magnificently received by Louis XIV., who assigned him a large pension, and the palace of St. Germain as a residence. He went to Ireland in 1689, in which country the native population were attached to his cause.

There he underwent many humiliations, and was defeated at the decisive battle of the Boyne, July 1, 1690. Returning to France, he resided there until his death. The battle of La Hogue, in 1692, proved fatal to his hope of a successful descent on England, though the idea was not abandoned. He was offered the candidature for the crown of Poland in 1696, but would not accept it. The treaty of Ryswick in 1695, by giving peace to France and England, removed all prospect of restoration; but the ex-king and his family continued to be the guests of Louis XIV. His health declined, and on Sept. 2, 1701, he was struck with apoplexy, and died in two weeks.