The Daughters of James II

TWO QUEENS. THE DAUGHTERS OF JAMES II OF ENGLAND.

IT is interesting to turn over a chestful of old family letters stored away in a garret which has been closed, perhaps, for a century. There is a lady living in Holland called the Countess of Bentinct, who has long possessed a rare treasure of this kind, a box of old letters written by James II of England and his two daughters, Mary and Anne, both of whom reigned after their father lost his crown by turning Catholic. Recently, the Countess of Bentinct has published these letters in Holland, and now all the world can read what these royal personages thought in the crisis of their fate, in the very years (1687 and 1688) when James was estranging all his Protestant subjects, and when his daughters, Mary of Orange and the Princess Anne, were looking on and watching the events which were to call them to the throne of Great Britain.

The Princess Mary, a beautiful woman twenty-six years of age, was then living in Holland in the palace of her husband, William, Prince of Orange, whom she devotedly loved. The Princess Anne, married to a son of the King of Denmark, lived in England. Both sisters, if we may judge by their letters, were warmly attached to the Church of England. Nevertheless, upon reading Mary's letters, some uncharitable persons might use the language of Shakespeare and say, "The lady doth protest too much." As to the King, her father, he gave proof of his sincerity by sacrificing his throne to his convictions. The first letter of importance in this collection is one written by James II to his eldest daughter Mary, giving her, in compliance with her request, the reasons why he had changed his religion. This letter was written November 4, 1687, about a year before William of Orange invaded England and seized the crown.

" I must tell you first," wrote the King, " that I was brought up very strictly in the English Church by Dr. Stuart, to whom the King, my father, gave particular instructions to that end, and I was so zealous that when the Queen, my mother, tried to rear my brother, the Duke of Gloucester, in the Catholic religion, I did my utmost (preserving always the respect due her) to keep him firm in his first principles, and as young people often do, I thought it was a point of honor to be firmly attached to the sentiments in which I was reared."

He proceeds to tell her that, after the dethronement of his father, Charles I, and all the time he lived an exile in foreign countries, no Catholic ever attempted to convert him ; and he assures her that his change of faith began within himself. The first thing that attracted his attention, he tells his daughter, was the great devotion that he remarked among Catholics of all ranks and conditions, and the frequent reformation of Catholic young men who had previously been dissolute.

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" I observed also," he says, " the becoming manner of their public worship, their churches so well adorned, and the great charities which they maintained ; all of which made me begin to have a better opinion of their religion, and compelled me to enquire into it more carefully."

Having reached this point, he began to study the doctrines in dispute, as they were presented in well-known books, and particularly in the New Testament, which, he says, plainly reveals " an infallible Church," against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. This was his main position, which he fortified by quoting the usual texts. He writes on this subject at great length to his (laughter, and it is impossible to doubt that he gave utterance to what he really believed and warmly felt. All these letters, I should explain, are written in the French language, which had probably been the language of the family since the time of their ancestor, Mary, Queen of Scots, great-grandmother to James II. Princess Mary kept even her private diary in French, wrote to her sister Anne in French, and probably knew the French language much better than she did the English. In the public library at the Hague there is a splendid English Bible, which was handed to her when she was crowned Queen in Westminster Abbey, on the title-page of which are these words, in her own hand :

"This book was given the king and I at our coronation. MARIE R.

Her French is better than this, and even the spelling is no worse than was common among educated French ladies of that period. She answered the King's letter at inordinate length, and employed all the forms of respect then used towards monarchs, beginning her letter with Sire," and always addressing her father as " V. M.," which signifies Votre Majeste. She showed a good deal of skill and tact in meeting his arguments, and it is possible that she had the aid of some learned doctor of divinity. Upon the question of the infallibility of the Roman Church, she says :

"I have never understood that it has been decided, even by Catholics themselves, whether this infallibility rests in the Pope alone, or in a General Council, or in both together ; and I hope Your Majesty will be willing to permit me to ask where it was when there were three popes at once, each of whom had his Council called General, and when all the popes thundered anathemas against one another ?"

She argued this point at considerable length, because, as she remarked, "if the infallibility be conceded, every other claim follows as a matter of course." The King ordered his ambassador to Holland to supply the Princess with the best Catholic books, in which the points of difference were treated by theologians. This command was obeyed, and the Princess dutifully read some of them, and wrote her opinion of them to her father. She would have made a very good reviewer, so apt was she to seize the weak places of a book. One of the Catholic authors remarked that people could never be convinced by insults and violence.

"I must believe, then," said she, "that the first edition of his book was published before the King of France (Louis X1V) began to convert people by his dragoons, since toward the end of his work he gives high praise to that king."

The same author objected to the circulation of the Bible on the ground that "women and ignorant people" could not understand it. Without stopping to remark upon the contemptuous allusion to the intellect of her sex, she observes, in reply, that " our souls are as precious in the eyes of God as the wisest, for before him there is no respect of persons." And, besides, as she continues :

"God requires of each person according to what he has, and not according to what he has not; through His mercy He has left us a written Word which is clear and exact."

She also quoted the texts relied on by Protestants, such as, " Search the Scriptures," and others ; showing a surprising familiarity with the controversies of the time, which indeed were to her and her sister of the most vital interest. More than a crown was at stake. If their father held on his course, Mary might at any moment be called upon to fill a vacant throne. or be the nominal head of a rebellion against her own father. Anne, meanwhile, was full of anxiety and apprehension. It was her cruel fate to become the mother of seventeen children, all of whom died in childhood ; so that for many years she lived in almost continual anxiety, each child bringing new hopes, which were soon changed to apprehension and despair. At this very time she wrote to her sister from her palace in London, called the Cockpit:

"I cannot say half of what I wish because I am obliged to return immediately to my poor child, for 1 am more anxious when I am absent from her."

It was nearly twenty years before she ceased to hope. All her children perished in infancy except one, who lived to be eleven years old; so that the sentence just quoted represents a great part of the history of her married life. In October, 1688, William, Prince of Orange, with a fleet of six hundred vessels, sailed for England, leaving his wife in Holland to pray for his success. She relates in her diary the manner of their parting, which was certainly peculiar.
"In case," said the Prince, "it pleases God that I never more see you, it will be necessary for you to marry again."

These words, she says, surprised her and rent her heart.

"There is no need," continued the Prince, " for me to tell you not to marry a Papist."

On uttering these words he burst into tears, and as soon as he could command his voice he assured her that it was only his anxiety for the reformed religion which made him speak as he had clone. She did not know what to reply. But at last she said:

"I have never loved any one but you, and should not know how to love another. Besides, as I have been married so many years without having the blessing of a child, I believe that that is sufficient to exempt me from ever thinking of what you propose."

She accompanied the Prince to his ship and saw the fleet set sail. A month passed before she heard news of him, during which she spent most of her time in public and private prayers, as did also all her court, and a great number of the people of Holland.

"Every morning," she records, " I attended the French prayers which were held in my own house. At noon, I joined in the English prayers; and at five in the after-noon, I attended church to hear a sermon; at half-past seven in the evening, I was present at evening prayers. All this I did constantly, God by His grace giving me health to be able to do it. Every Friday we had a particular solemnity in my house, where I then had an English sermon preached. But my enemy, the devil, found means to stir up within me scruples and fears, causing me to apprehend that by all these public devotions I was attracting the praises of men, and that that would excite my vanity. I feared also that if I should abstain from them and remain at home, I should not give them that good example and encouragement to devotion which was my duty in the rank in which it had pleased God to place me. Hence, whether I went to prayers or abstained, I saw something to fear. Nevertheless, thanks be to God, I resolved to do my duty without troubling myself as to the consequences."

During that month of suspense, the Princess received no company. When at length she was assured that her husband had made a safe landing, she resumed her receptions, four days in the week, at which, however, as she herself records, "I did not play at cards." A young lady has seldom been so cruelly situated as she was then ; her husband having invaded the dominions of her father with the deliberate intention to drive him from his throne and country. It is evident from these letters that she had no scruples of conscience in the matter, but gave all her heart and approval to her husband. She opposed her father, not merely because he was a Catholic, but wished to make England Catholic. She believed that he was trying to pass off upon the people of England a spurious child, who would continue the work which he had begun, and fasten upon Great Britain a line of Catholic kings.

Success rewarded the efforts of the Prince of Orange, and in a few weeks Mary joined him in England. In April, 1689, William and Mary were crowned at Westminster Abbey, Xing and Queen of England. As she was not merely Queen by right of marriage, but by right of birth, she was crowned in all respects as a monarch, being girt with a sword, placed upon the throne, and presented with a Bible, a pair of spurs, and a small globe.

The gracious manners of Queen Mary, her pronounced piety, and her noble presence went far towards reconciling the people to the ungenial demeanor of her husband. It was she who introduced into England the taste for collecting china, which has been often since revived, and which prevails even at this day. She continued to write letters to her old friends in Holland, and to make entries into her diary, some of which are printed in the volume under consideration. Her husband (lid not find Ireland so easy to conquer as England, and it was not till the summer of 1691 that the Catholic Irish were finally subdued. When the news of victory reached England, the churches opened, and the people thronged to them to offer thanks to God. Queen Mary, at the Palace of Kensington, wrote thus in her diary:

"What thanks ought I to render, O my soul, to thy Lord for all His bounties? They are indeed new every morning, and I can well say : it is of thy mercy, 0 Lord, that we are not consumed, for Thy mercy endureth for-ever. But what are we, thy poor sinful people of this country, what is my husband, and what am I, that we should receive so many favors ? O my God, to thee be all the glory! May we learn to humble ourselves truly before Him, and may all those poor people in Ireland, as well as ourselves here, being delivered from our enemies, serve Thee in holiness and justice all the days of our lives!

Queen Mary did not long enjoy her royal state. At the early age of thirty-two, in the very bloom and lustre of her maturity, she was seized with small-pox, and died in a few days. The King, her husband, was led, almost insensible, from the chamber of death, and when he died, eight years after, a gold ring, containing a lock of Mary's hair, was found next to his person suspended by a black silk ribbon. The childless Anne then succeeded to the throne. So much for this box of royal letters, now opened for the first time in this country.

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Source: Daughters of Genius: A Series of Sketches of authors, artists, reformers, and heroines, queens, princesses, and women of society, women eccentric and peculiar. James Parton, Hubbard Brothers, Publishers, Philadelphia: 1886.