What were the mistakes of James II of England?
The biggest of James’s mistakes was his efforts to restore Roman Catholicism in England. He attempted to master opposition by controlling local elections, suspending a highly suspicious Anglican Whig Parliament, expelling Protestant university officials and replacing them with Catholics, removing the critical bishop of London, and maintaining a standing army outside London. While granting toleration to Catholics and to Protestant Dissenters, he did so by decree and not by parliamentary statute. When the archbishop of Canterbury refused to promulgate the decree, he and six bishops were arrested in June 1688. The occasion caused even passive observers to resent James’s autocracy, and when a few ardent opponents summoned William of Orange, James’s son-in-law, to save England’s “religion, liberties and properties” by invasion, most of the nation willingly allowed this “Glorious Revolution” to run its course. James did not plan to make himself a continental-style despot, nor to destroy the
