How James II Lost the Throne | Was the Warming Pan Baby Real? | History of the (In)Glorious Revolution

From History Calling

The story of HOW JAMES II LOST THE THRONE is a bizarre tale, filled with preposterous conspiracy theories, backstabbing Princesses and a little boy who should have been the monarch after his father’s death, but who has gone down in history as the baby who caused a revolution. Usually the birth of a Prince of Wales would have been a cause for celebration, but when James II’s wife, Mary of Modena, produced the longed for boy, Prince James Francis Edward Stuart, in 1688, there were accusations she was either never pregnant, or that her own child had been a girl, or even born dead and was therefore replaced with a boy who was brought into the birthing chamber in a warming pan. Within five months, the warming pan scandal had grown to such epic proportions that it provided enough ammunition for James’s son-in-law/nephew, Prince William of Orange, to oust the King from his throne. William took over as William III, ruling alongside his wife/cousin, Mary II in the only instance of joint monarchy in English or Scottish history. This sequence of events has become known as the Glorious Revolution. James, his Queen and their infant son had to flee to mainland Europe where they lived out the rest of their lives in exile after James’s failed attempt to retake the crown at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland in 1690. But was the warming pan baby real, was the child James and Mary would go on to raise nothing more than an imposter Prince, or was this story a concoction dreamt up by James’s enemies when they were faced with the birth of a new Catholic dynasty? In this episode of History Calling we look at the history of the Glorious Revolution, at the fall of James II and at how the Stuarts lost the throne for the second time in as many generations. We’ll consider the childbearing history of Mary of Modena, the evidence given by those who witnessed the baby’s birth in 1688 (including the dowager Queen of England, Catherine of Braganza) and look at why so many people wanted rid of James II, including his own daughters, Princess Mary of Orange and Princess Anne of Denmark.