Mary of Modena

Mary of Modena (1658-1718), second wife of James II and Queen consort of England.

Role in the Glorious Revolution

Mary was an Italian Catholic princess who married James in 1673. For years, the Protestant establishment tolerated James’s Catholicism because his heirs were his two Protestant daughters, Mary and Anne, from his first marriage.

That changed in June 1688 when Mary of Modena gave birth to a son, James Francis Edward Stuart. A Catholic male heir meant a Catholic dynasty. The Protestant establishment panicked. Rumors spread — false but politically useful — that the baby was a fraud, smuggled into the birthing chamber in a warming pan.

Within months, leading English nobles invited William of Orange to invade. Mary fled to France with the infant in December 1688, followed by James himself. She spent the rest of her life at the exiled Stuart court at Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

In the novel

Mary’s pregnancy and the birth of the Prince of Wales are part of the cascade of events that drive the Glorious Revolution in Book 3.