Sunday 18 September 2011

September 16th, 1701: The death of a deposed King

Stephanie A. Mann, author of Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation, marks the anniversary of James II's death in 1701. Having been overthrown in favour of his daughter and son-in-law in 1688, Britain's last Catholic monarch died in exile as a guest of his cousin, the King of France. He was survived by his second wife, Queen Maria-Beatrice, and their two children, Prince James-Francis-Edward and Princess Louisa-Maria-Theresa. In England, he was survived by his estranged daughter, Princess Anne, who had supported her father's deposition thirteen years earlier.

The late king was buried in Saint Edmund's Chapel in the Church of the English Benedictines, the main church of the English Roman Catholic community in Paris. Tragically, and as with most royal tombs in France, James's grave was desecrated during the French Revolution eight decades later and his body was destroyed.

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