Queens of Britain Series: Mary II

 Welcome to the Queens of Britain series. In 2024, the blog will spotlight the reigning queens from the island of Great Britain. Check back regularly to learn about the women who led their nations.

By Willem Wissing via Wikimedia Commons

"Honor thy father." The fifth of the Bible's Ten Commandments was a difficult one for the very pious Mary Princess of Orange. As the eldest daughter of James Duke of York, she had grown up in a privileged but unusual family situation. Her uncle was King Charles II, who had no legitimate children. Thus, her father was the heir to the throne. For most of her life, Mary was second in the line of succession, moving to third for brief periods when younger brothers supplanted her but then died young. 

Mary's relationship with her father was complicated by religion. Both of her parents had converted to Catholicism, but Uncle Charles had insisted that their children be raised as Protestants. Mary and her siblings were removed from the Yorks' authority and raised by Protestant caregivers. Although eight children were born to the couple, Mary and Anne, five years her junior, were the only ones to live more than a few years. They saw their parents only occasionally and both became very staunch Protestants. (See my post When Protestant Daughters Have Catholic Daddies.)

The British Royal Family was very small at this time: King Charles II and Queen Catherine, the Duke and Duchess of York, Anne and Mary, and Queen Henrietta Maria, their grandmother and the widow of the executed King Charles I. Henrietta Maria's youngest daughter had married into the French Royal Family and her eldest daughter had married into the Dutch. Initially, King Charles wanted young Mary to marry the French heir but British politicians bewailed a Catholic marriage and it was determined that she would marry her first cousin, the Dutch Prince William of Orange.

Mary sobbed for an entire day and throughout the wedding. She was only 15 and William was nearly 12 years her senior. Although he was fourth in line to the British throne after Mary and Anne, he was not popular with his young cousins. Anne even compared him to a notorious Greek monster.

Now Princess of Orange, Mary journeyed to the continent and was welcomed with fanfare at The Hague. She quickly became pregnant, but suffered a miscarriage that may have left her barren. She is thought to have had one or two additional but unsuccessful pregnancies. Her childlessness was painful to her all of her life. Nevertheless, her relationship with William began to flourish. Although visually mismatched -- Mary was young, lovely, and tall while William was comparatively old, unattractive, and short -- the couple formed a good partnership with Mary serving as a devoted wife. She even became jealous when she heard a rumor that he had a mistress.

For his part, William was often away at war. His renown and prowess as a soldier was to become important as things started shifting in Britain. When King Charles died in 1685, Mary's father became King James II. His queen, however, was not her mother. She had died when Mary was nine. A few years later, James had remarried a Catholic princess, Mary of Modena, who was only four years older than his daughter, in an attempt to beget sons. The birth of sons would displace Mary and her sister Anne in the line of succession as boys took precedence over girls at that time. So far, Mary of Modena had delivered 10 children, many of whom were stillborn. One little girl, Isabel, had lived four years but the others all died within a few weeks of birth.

All of that changed in 1688 when it was announced that the queen was expecting her eleventh child. Mary and her sister Anne openly questioned whether their stepmother was even pregnant. Other prominent Protestants also spread rumors that the pregnancy was fake and that the Catholic king was preparing to foist a false Catholic heir upon the nation and prevent the crown from going to his Protestant daughter. When a baby boy was born, some suggested that an infant had been secreted into the queen's delivery room in a warming pan.

Whether the infant was a true child of the king or not, the Protestant leadership and Parliament were ready to prevent the continuation of a Catholic monarchy. They invited Mary's husband William to gather his army and invade in the name of his wife's claim to the throne. With the threat from his son-in-law matching the mood of much of his country, James fled to France. Parliament determined that his departure equaled abdication both for him and his Catholic descendants. Mary was invited to assume the throne.

Ceiling painted by Sir James Thornhill,
photographed by James Brittain

Mary herself insisted that she should serve jointly with her husband. Even though she had not wanted to marry William in the beginning, 11 years of marriage had changed her mind. She also believed that a wife should not be superior to her husband. So it was that Britain's first and only joint monarchs were crowned together as King William III and Queen Mary II. Termed the "Glorious Revolution" or the "Bloodless Revolution", the accession of William and Mary permanently changed the relationship between the Crown and Parliament. From thenceforth, the monarch ruled only by the consent of the governed and no longer had the power to act without Parliamentary approval. This was also the moment when all Catholics were banned from inheriting the British throne. Mary and her reign may be one of the least well-remembered and least celebrated of Britain's reigning queens, but it could be said that her leadership has had the most important and lasting impact on the British monarchy.

William was firmly established as the "lead" monarch with Mary remaining out of governance unless he was away at war, which he often was. Mary became a kind of summer queen, only governing when he was on campaign, often fighting her father. 

For the most part, Mary preferred to focus on the promotion of the Anglican Church and gardening. Her strong religious fervor is what led her to charter a new college in the Virginia colony that would train Anglican ministers in the New World. To this day, it is known as the College of William and Mary. Her love of gardens also created legacies for her in the gardens of Het Loo in The Netherlands and Hampton Court Palace in London.

Her reign as queen was short-lived. Mary was struck by a particularly deadly strain of smallpox in 1694. She was 32. Her enemies said her early death was punishment for breaking the Commandment about honoring your father. Nevertheless, the decisions she had made ensured that her father, his sons, and his sons' descendants never again ruled in Britain. Instead, she was succeeded by her co-monarch William, the husband she had chosen to support over her father. 

William deeply mourned Mary. He wore her wedding ring on a ribbon around his neck for the rest of his life. He never remarried and, upon his death in 1701, the throne passed to his cousin, Mary's younger sister Anne, as Mary had agreed at the time of their unprecedented, revolutionary accession.

QUEENS OF BRITAIN SERIES
Boudica, Queen of the Iceni 
Empress Matilda 
Margaret Maid of Norway 
Lady Jane Grey
Queen Mary I
Queen Elizabeth I
Mary Queen of Scots 
Queen Mary II
Queen Anne - coming soon
Queen Victoria - coming soon
Queen Elizabeth II - coming soon

MORE ABOUT MARY
The Death of Queen Mary on Madam Gilfurt
Displaying Queen Mary II's Exoticks Collection on Historic Royal Palaces
King William III: The Glorious Revolution and His Reign with Mary II on Hattons of London
Mary II on Culloden Battlefield
Mary II on The Stuart Successions Project
Mary II and Queen Anne: The Representations of Two Sisters on Team Queens
A Monarch a Month by Ten Hour Stitcher
Monarch of the Month: Queen Mary II on An Historian about Town
Queen Mary II: A Short Reign, a lasting legacy for us on W&M News Archive
The Stuart Dynasty - William, Mary, and Anne on A Royal Heraldry
Who Should Sit on the Throne? on The History of Parliament
William III and Mary II: England's Only Joint Sovereigns on Historic Royal Palaces
William & Mary on The Seventeenth Century Lady