"As Charles defaulted to his father’s autocratic habits, his throne returned to the vulnerability of the 1640s. On his deathbed in 1685, he showed more concern for his mistresses than his monarchy, and predicted that his brother’s reign would be short. So it proved. Louis’s revocation the same year of the Edict of Nantes (which had guaranteed freedom of worship for Protestants) flooded England with Protestant refugees, and every pulpit resounded to tales of Catholic atrocities. James II's Catholicism was toxic. He had to suppress a rebellion by the Protestant Duke of Monmouth, and began appointing Catholics to senior positions in the army, the church and Oxford University. He used his patronage to pack Parliament with loyal Tories. Even so, with the succession securely Protestant, all might have survived but for a final crisis. In June 1688, James’s wife gave birth to a son, thus removing Mary and William from the succession and substituting a Catholic infant. The battered Restoration compromise was in tatters."
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Simon Jenkins, "The English Revolution, 1642-1689," in Revolutions: How They Changed History and What They Mean Today (2020), ed. by Peter Furtado, pp. 19-20
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_II_of_England
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James II of England
James II and VII (14 October 1633 – 16 September 1701) was King of England and Ireland as James II and King of Scotland as James VII, from 6 February 1685 until he was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. He was the last Roman Catholic monarch to reign over the Kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland.
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