Lennox is the daughter of Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond, an illegitimate grandson of King Charles II, and Lady Sarah Cadogan. She is renowned for her beauty, vivacity, and intellectual curiosity, and is considered the most attractive and socially adept of the Lennox sisters. She is presented at court at the age of thirteen and becomes engaged to James FitzGerald, 20th Earl of Kildare, in 1745.
James FitzGerald becomes Marquess of Kildare and then Duke of Leinster in recognition of his political influence. The couple’s financial arrangements are generous, leaving FitzGerald a substantial jointure and properties, which later strains the resources of her surviving children.
After the Duke of Leinster’s death in 1773, FitzGerald marries her children’s tutor, William Ogilvie, on August 26, 1774, having already begun an affair. Ogilvie is nine years her junior and the likely biological father of her youngest son from her first marriage. She and Ogilvie have three additional children together, two of whom survive into adulthood. She spends time in France and Ireland before eventually settling in London to oversee her daughters’ marriages and engage in social affairs.
FitzGerald is a keen reader, politicized, and culturally active. She has a strong interest in literature, politics, and Enlightenment ideas, influenced by thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau. She actively manages her estates and interiors, notably Carton House and its gardens, and pursues educational and outdoor activities for her children, demonstrating innovation in child-rearing and estate management.
FitzGerald is deeply affectionate and attentive to her children, particularly Lord Edward FitzGerald, a key figure in the Irish republican movement. She is involved in mourning and supporting her children, enduring the deaths of fourteen of her 22 children across both marriages. She also navigates complex social and financial challenges, ensuring her families’ estates and alliances endure despite societal pressures.
FitzGerald’s life and correspondence exemplify the culture, politics, and familial dynamics of eighteenth-century Anglo-Irish aristocracy. She has been depicted in numerous portraits by artists including Sir Joshua Reynolds, Allan Ramsay (pictured above), and Arthur Devis. Her story, and that of the Lennox sisters, is popularized in Stella Tillyard’s 1994 book Aristocrats and the six-part BBC/PBS television series adapted in 1999, highlighting her role in history, society, and culture.
In summary, Emily FitzGerald, Duchess of Leinster, is remembered as a central figure of aristocratic Ireland and Britain, a mother to a large and influential family, and a socially and politically engaged noblewoman whose life bridged familial devotion, political awareness, and cultural sophistication.
King Richard II of England lands at Waterford, County Waterford, on October 2, 1394, at the head of the largest English military force ever to enter an Irish port. This marks the beginning of his first major expedition to Ireland, a campaign aimed at reasserting royal authority and implementing sweeping administrative reforms.
By 1394, England has secured peace with both France and Scotland, allowing Richard to focus on Ireland. The Lordship of Ireland is in decline, with Gaelic lords like Art Óg Mac Murchadha Caomhánach of Leinster resisting English overlordship. Richard’s stated goal is to secure the submission of the great Gaelic lords and to integrate them into the English legal and political system, making them equal subjects of the Crown.
Richard arrives with an army of about 8,000–9,000 men, a force far larger than any previous English intervention in Ireland since the late twelfth century. The campaign is both military and political: while he seeks to subdue resistance, his primary aim is reform of the Irish administration rather than total conquest.
The expedition moves through lower Leinster, encountering resistance from Mac Murchadha Caomhánach. Historical accounts note a dramatic near-capture of the king’s enemies at a place called Laveroc, where the Earl Marshal almost seizes Mac Murchadha Caomhánach and his wife in their beds. Despite these skirmishes, Richard manages to reconcile most of the major Gaelic lords to his overlordship by promising access to royal justice and arbitration.
Richard’s 1394–95 Irish campaign is the first visit by a reigning English monarch to Ireland since King John in 1210. It demonstrates the king’s ambition to centralize control over the entire lordship, but it also highlights the limits of English power in the face of Gaelic resistance and administrative challenges.
In summary, Richard II’s arrival in Waterford on October 2, 1394, is a pivotal moment in medieval Irish history — a show of royal might, a test of political reform, and a reminder of the enduring challenges of governing a diverse and resistant Ireland.
Tone is a French Army officer serving under GeneralJean Joseph Amable Humbert in the Irish expedition of 1798. He leaves Ireland for France in 1794, later moves to the United States, and rejoins Humbert in Paris in November 1797. At Ballinamuck, the French-led Irish forces are decisively defeated by British troops. Disguised as a peasant, he is captured on September 8, 1798.
Tone is imprisoned in the Provost prison at Dublin barracks and put on trial before a court-martial on September 21, 24 and 26, 1798. In his defence, he claims he had left Ireland before war was declared, that his imprisonment in France proved his innocence, and that he had tried to prevent the rebels from committing acts of revenge and plunder. He is, however, found guilty of high treason.
On September 29, 1798, Tone is hanged at Arbour Hill Prison and buried at Bodenstown Graveyard, County Kildare. He is unmarried but has a daughter raised by his sister Margaret.
Tone is one of roughly 200 Irish prisoners hanged after the Battle of Ballinamuck, alongside other United Irishmen and French sympathisers. The battle marks a turning point in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, leading to the repatriation of most French soldiers but the summary execution of many Irish insurgents.
In summary, Matthew Tone’s execution on September 29, 1798, is a direct consequence of his role in the French-led Irish expedition, his capture at the Battle of Ballinamuck, and the British government’s harsh response to the defeat, which sees widespread executions of captured rebels.
Casement, a founder of the Irish National Volunteers and a former British diplomat, has traveled to the United States to seek American backing for his republican cause. When that proves unsuccessful, he turns to Germany, hoping to enlist Irish soldiers in the British Army to fight alongside the Germans in World War I. His plan is to raise an “Irish Brigade” composed of Irish prisoners of war captured in Belgium and France, who are estimated to number 35,000–40,000.
The September 13 meeting in Washington is one of several contacts Casement makes with German officials, including Papen, to present his proposal. He argues that an Irish Brigade could bolster the German war effort while advancing Ireland’s independence goals. However, Papen rejects the idea, and the alliance does not materialize.
Without German support, Casement’s efforts to secure Irish military aid for the 1916 Easter Rising fails. The Rising proceeds without foreign assistance, and Casement himself is arrested by British authorities in 1916, tried for treason, and executed on August 3, 1916. Despite his execution, he remains remembered as a key figure in Irish nationalism and a symbol of resistance to British rule.
In summary, the September 13, 1914, meeting in Washington, D.C., marks a high point in Casement’s diplomatic campaign for Irish independence, but it ends in rejection, setting the stage for his later role in the Easter Rising and his martyrdom.
(Pictured: Sir Roger Casement (left) and Franz von Papen)
The alarm is raised around 2:30 BST when the vessel begins taking on water rapidly. Captain Colm Newport reports a sudden ingress of water that causes a critical loss of stability. Despite emergency pumps, the flooding is uncontrollable, and the crew and trainees abandon the ship in an orderly evacuation.
Five crew members and twenty trainees (most Irish, but also including Britons and Italians) transfer to life rafts within minutes. The evacuation is completed in about four to five minutes, with all twenty-five people safely moved away from the sinking vessel.
French coastguard vessels, along with assistance from Haldoz and Arklow Venus, rescue everyone. They are taken to a hotel on Belle-Île, where they are cared for and contact their families. The Irish Ambassador to France, Anne Anderson, also arrives to meet them.
The exact cause of the sinking remains unclear. The Marine Casualty Investigation Board finds the vessel well-maintained beyond statutory requirements and no evidence of negligence. One theory, supported by some accounts, is that the ship may have collided with a submerged container, fracturing its keel timbers. However, the captain and officials refuse to speculate.
Plans are made to raise the ship, with an estimated cost of €3.8 million, but by February 2009 the Irish government decides against recovery, citing the risk of further damage from storms and fishing nets. The wreck rests upright on a sandy seabed at about eighty metres depth, with one hull plank damaged.
The loss of Asgard II is a significant blow to Ireland’s sail training tradition, prompting discussions about replacing the vessel.
Humbert is the eldest of six children of Jean-Joseph Humbert, a farmer and trader, and Catherine (née Privat), who dies when he is three years old. From a modest rural background, he works briefly as a hatter and rabbit hunter before entering the military in July 1789 amid the early stages of the French Revolution.
In 1796, Humbert is assigned to prepare for an expedition to Ireland. In the ill-fated Expédition d’Irlande, his ship Droits de l’Homme is wrecked off the Bay of Audierne in January 1797, but he survives. In 1798, he leads about 1,000 French troops to Ireland, landing at Killala. His forces fight and win at Ballina and the Races of Castlebar, proclaiming a Republic of Connacht before being defeated and captured at the Battle of Ballinamuck. He is exchanged for British prisoners.
In 1810, Humbert emigrates to New Orleans, where he becomes acquainted with French pirate Jean Lafitte. He joins the Buenos Aires rebellion in 1814 before returning home. In 1815, he fights the British at the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812, earning thanks from General Andrew Jackson. He later lives as a schoolteacher in New Orleans until his death on January 3, 1823.
Humbert’s career spans revolutionary France, Napoleonic campaigns, and post-Napoleonic adventures, making him a notable figure in late 18th- and early 19th-century military history.
In 2002, the Irish tourism sector faces weaker-than-expected visitor figures. To address this and stimulate short-term revenue, O’Donoghue reallocates €3 million specifically for front-line marketing activities targeted at both domestic and international audiences. At the time, he has recently been appointed Minister for Arts, Sport, and Tourism, a role he holds from June 2002 to 2007.
The funds are intended to bolster promotional campaigns abroad, particularly in major overseas markets such as Britain, France, and the United States, support domestic marketing efforts to encourage local travel and spending, and focus on aggressively promoting Ireland in the British market, identified as having the highest potential return on investment for tourism.
Tourism Ireland, which operates as the official agency promoting the island of Ireland as a tourist destination, welcomes the additional funding. Chief Executive Paul O’Toole emphasizes that the investment will ensure maximum returns for the Irish tourism industry.
Before this funding boost, Irish tourism is a major economic sector. According to governmental reports from 2002, foreign exchange earnings in 2001 reach approximately €3.7 billion, domestic tourism earnings exceed €1.2 billion, and the industry supports nearly 140,000 jobs. The €3 million marketing allocation is part of a strategic effort to enhance Ireland’s international competitiveness and stimulate both short-term visitor numbers and longer-term growth.
While immediate tangible effects of this specific €3 million investment are not detailed in the sources, it reflects Ireland’s broader commitment to tourism promotion. By investing in strategic marketing campaigns in key international markets, the government aims to recover visitor numbers and strengthen Ireland’s profile as a tourist destination.
In conclusion, the July 15, 2002, announcement by Minister John O’Donoghue is a targeted move to energize Irish tourism through immediate marketing action, especially in international markets, during a period of lower-than-expected tourist arrivals.
Barry returns to Bandon in early 1919. He describes in his guerilla days in Ireland a Damascus-like conversion to Irish nationalism on hearing of the Easter Rising while with the Mesopotamian expeditionary force, but he is only accepted into the IRA with considerable caution. Initially tested in intelligence and training work, in mid-1920 he takes charge of the new brigade flying column, which is used both to train officers and to stage offensive actions.
Barry adapts his military experience successfully to the demands of guerrilla warfare, becoming the most famed of column leaders during the Irish War of Independence. In his memoirs, he pours scorn on the obsession of many with military titles and orthodox procedure, complaining of a “paper army.” He stresses the need for spontaneity, initiative, and knowledge of local conditions. “The reality,” he writes, “was a group of fellows, mostly in caps and not-too-expensive clothing, wondering how to tackle their job and where they would sleep that night or get their supper.” (The Reality of the Anglo–Irish War (1974)). He well realises that the war’s character does not permit any close control from the IRA’s GHQ in Dublin, hence increasing the importance of local leaders. His tactics put strong emphasis on speed of movement and on the need to attack the enemy at his weakest point. The column’s ambush successes are small in number but among the best-remembered of the war. He admits, however, that his own and his column’s lack of experience with mines frequently weakened their offensives.
The column’s first successful ambush is at Tooreen on October 22, 1920, followed on November 28 by the dramatic ambushing of a patrol of auxiliaries at Kilmichael while traveling from their Macroom base. A column of thirty-six men, divided into three sections, kill sixteen auxiliaries, with one captured and later shot, suffering two fatalities of their own. Controversy has raged since over whether a false surrender by the British force caused the brutality of some of the deaths. Together with the Bloody Sunday killings of a week earlier in Dublin, Kilmichael has a profound effect on the British military and political establishment, with the declaration in December of martial law for much of Munster and the implementation of wide-ranging internment, together with the authorisation of official reprisals.
After a short period in hospital with a heart condition, in early 1921 Barry leads unsuccessful attacks on Kilbrittain, Innishannon, Drimoleague, and Bandon barracks. The seizure of Burgatia House, outside Rosscarbery, in early February, and the successful resistance made there to British troops, wins much publicity but has little military significance. He is a leading figure in the brutal final stage of the war in the first six months of 1921, which sees widespread shooting of suspected spies and destruction of loyalist property. By March 1921, his flying column, with 104 men, is easily the largest in Ireland, and an explosives expert, Capt. McCarthy, has joined them.
The protracted engagement between Barry’s column and encircling British forces at Crossbarry on March 19, 1921, comes at a time when large-scale sweeps are making life increasingly difficult for the IRA. It consists of a daring and courageous breakout. Crossbarry is the largest action of the war, and Barry is to regard it as even more important than Kilmichael. Soon afterwards, Rosscarbery barracks is successfully attacked by a Barry-led party, representing one of the few successful such initiatives in 1921. Isolated triumphs, however, cannot hide the fact that pressure is increasing on the column, and he becomes increasingly critical of inactive regions. He is later to say that all County Kerry does during the war is to shoot one decent police inspector at Listowel Racecourse and a colleague of his. He is strongly critical also of the lack of assistance from GHQ and of the divisionalisation policy. He visits Dublin in May, travels around with Michael Collins, and is present when two American officers demonstrate the Thompson submachine gun. He is more aware than most of his 1st Southern Division colleagues of the scarcity of arms and ammunition at the war’s end.
During the truce, Barry becomes liaison officer for Munster, riling the British by insisting on his military rank, and criticising the IRA liaison men in Dublin for being overly deferential. He joins the overwhelming majority of the Cork IRA in opposing the Anglo–Irish Treaty but plays a characteristically maverick role throughout the treaty split. His independent attitude is heightened by his dislike of Liam Lynch, the republican IRA’s Chief of Staff, and his continuing respect for Michael Collins. He shows impatience at the long-drawn-out peace initiatives. In March 1922, therefore, he advocates armed confrontation with pro-treaty units over the occupation of barracks in Limerick, and on June 18 he submits a resolution, which only narrowly fails, at the army convention, giving British troops seventy-two hours to leave Dublin.
At the beginning of the Irish Civil War, Barry is arrested entering the Four Courts disguised as a woman. He escapes from an internment camp at Gormanston in early September 1922. For the rest of the war his actions mirror its confused nature. In late October 1922, he leads successful raids on the small towns of Ballineen and Enniskean, and later on Inchigeelagh and Ballyvourney. In December his column takes Carrick-on-Suir, demonstrating the weakness of the Free State army, but his talk of advancing on the Curragh and of large-scale actions does not materialise. There is no evidence that he is acting in accordance with any coordinated plan. By February 1923, he realises that the Republican IRA cause is hopeless and he is involved with Fr. Tom Duggan in efforts to get 1st Southern Division to declare a ceasefire. He journeys to Dublin to put pressure on the intransigent Lynch in this connection, telling Lynch, “I did more fighting in one week than you did in your whole life.”
Barry avoids capture in roundups after the war, remaining on the run until 1924. Unlike many republicans, he does not turn to constitutionalism, remaining strongly militaristic. He is always an unreconstructed republican, though by no means a naive one. In 1924 he becomes attached to Cleeves Milk Co., based in Limerick and Clonmel, and from 1927 to retirement in 1965 is general superintendent with the Cork harbour commissioners. He strongly advocates preserving the independence of the IRA army executive during the republican split of 1925–27. He is instrumental in continuing the drilling of IRA members and is a strong supporter of armed opposition to the Blueshirts.
During the 1930s Barry is arrested at various times for possession of arms and seditious utterances. He promotes an attack against a Freemasons’ meeting in Cork in 1936 and gives the orders for the killing on March 4 of that year of Vice-AdmiralHenry Boyle Somerville. He is opposed to the use by Frank Ryan of IRA volunteers to support the republican cause in the Spanish Civil War and to the proposals of Seán Russell for a bombing campaign in England. To maintain the link with traditional republicanism, he is elected IRA chief of staff in 1937. His plan, however, for the seizure of Armagh city, as part of a direct northern offensive, quickly collapses due to a leak of information, and he soon resigns his position. He forcefully attacks the bombing of English cities in 1938, regarding attacks on innocent civilians as immoral and counterproductive. He enlists in the National Army on July 12, 1940, only to be demobilised a month later. In 1946, he stands as an independent candidate in a by-election in the Cork Borough constituency, finishing at the bottom of the poll. He is more comfortable the following year touring the United States on an anti-partition platform.
In 1949 his Guerilla Days in Ireland is published. It proves a best-seller and has frequently been reprinted. It is well written in a forceful and direct style, one memoir needing no assistance from a ghost writer. Age does not mellow him: lawyers and bank managers are threatened by him over matters relating to his own column, and in 1974 he publishes a fierce pamphlet, angry at perceived slights in the Irish War of Independence memoir of Liam Deasy. He does strive to achieve a public reconciliation with Collins’s memory by unveiling the memorial to Collins at Sam’s Cross in 1966. On the outbreak of the Northern Ireland crisis in the late 1960s, he takes a militant line, castigating the argument that the Six Counties can be brought into the Republic by peaceful means, and asking when had peaceful means existed there. At the memorial meeting in Carrowkennedy, County Mayo, in 1971, he claims that there is a perfect right at the opportune time to take the Six Counties by force. He remains opposed to IRA bombing of civilian targets.
Barry dies in Cork on July 2, 1980. He is buried in St. Finbarr’s Cemetery, Cork. Early in the truce of 1921 he marries Leslie Price, one of the most active of Cumann na mBan members during and after the rising. They have no children.
While Barry always remains an influential figure in republican circles, he will be remembered best as the pioneer of guerrilla warfare, the hero of Kilmichael and Crossbarry. His military flair, individualism, and ruthlessness are well suited to the 1919–21 conflict. After that, his strained relations with colleagues and his lack of flexibility reduce his importance. While his life after the revolutionary era appears anti-climactic, he retains much of his charisma. In later years, he is ever willing to remind politicians and historians how far Ireland has retreated from republican ideals. He is often prickly and autocratic yet could be generous to old colleagues of either side of the treaty split. He is arguably the most intelligent but also the most intolerant of the revolutionary leaders.
(From: “Barry, Thomas Bernadine (‘Tom’)” by M. A. Hopkinson, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
O’Connor’s father, Andrew O’Connor (1846–1924), of Lanarkshire, Scotland, is a stonecutter who becones a professional sculptor. As a teenager, he apprentices to his father, helping him to design monuments for cemeteries.
O’Connor is involved in a minor controversy in 1909 when he is commissioned to design a statue for Commodore John Barry, of the American Revolutionary-era navy. His first design is heatedly attacked by Irish American groups. He submits a second version, but it too is ultimately rejected, and the sculptor John J. Boyle received the commission.
Charles is the eldest surviving son of Charles I and Henrietta Maria of France. His early years are unremarkable, but before he is twenty his conventional education has been completely overshadowed by the harsh lessons of defeat in the English Civil War against the Puritans and subsequent isolation and poverty. Thus he emerges into precocious maturity, cynical, self-indulgent, skilled in the sort of moral evasions that make life comfortable even in adversity.
Though the early years of tawdry dissipation tarnish the romance of Charles’s adventures, not all his actions are discreditable. He tries to fight his father’s battles in the west of England in 1645. He resists the attempts of his mother and his sister Henrietta Anne to convert him to Catholicism and remains openly loyal to his Protestant faith. In 1648, he makes strenuous efforts to save his father, and when, after Charles I’s execution in 1649, he is proclaimed Charles II by the Scots in defiance of the English republic. He is prepared to go to Scotland and swallow the stringently anti-Catholic and anti-Anglican Presbyterian Covenant as the price for alliance. But the sacrifice of friends and principles was futile and leaves him deeply embittered. The Scottish army is routed by the English under Oliver Cromwell at Dunbar in September 1650, and in 1651 Charles’s invasion of England ends in defeat at Worcester. The young king becomes a fugitive, hunted through England for forty days but protected by a handful of his loyal subjects until he escapes to France in October 1651.
Charles’s safety is comfortless, however. He is destitute and friendless, unable to bring pressure against an increasingly powerful England. France and the Dutch Republic are closed to him by Cromwell’s diplomacy, and he turns to Spain, with whom he concludes a treaty in April 1656. He persuades his brother James to relinquish his command in the French army and gives him some regiments of Anglo-Irish troops in Spanish service, but poverty dooms this nucleus of a royalist army to impotence. European princes take little interest in Charles and his cause, and his proffers of marriage are declined. Even Cromwell’s death does little to improve his prospects. But George Monck, one of Cromwell’s leading generals, realized that under Cromwell’s successors the country is in danger of being torn apart and with his formidable army creates the situation favourable to Charles’s restoration in 1660.
Most Englishmen now favour a return to a stable and legitimate monarchy, and, although more is known of Charles II’s vices than his virtues, he has, under the steadying influence of Edward Hyde, his chief adviser, avoided any damaging compromise of his religion or constitutional principles. With Hyde’s help, Charles issues in April 1660 his Declaration of Breda, expressing his personal desire for a general amnesty, liberty of conscience, an equitable settlement of land disputes, and full payment of arrears to the army. The actual terms are left to a free parliament, and on this provisional basis Charles is proclaimed king in May 1660. Landing at Dover on May 25, he reaches a rejoicing London on his 30th birthday.
The unconditional nature of the settlement that takes shape between 1660 and 1662 owes little to Charles’s intervention and likely exceeds his expectations. He is bound by the concessions made by his father in 1640 and 1641, but the Parliament elected in 1661 is determined on an uncompromising Anglican and royalist settlement. The Militia Act of 1661 gives Charles unprecedented authority to maintain a standing army, and the Corporation Act 1661 allows him to purge the boroughs of dissident officials. Other legislation places strict limits on the press and on public assembly, and the Act of Uniformity 1662 creates controls of education. An exclusive body of Anglican clergy and a well-armed landed gentry are the principal beneficiaries of Charles II’s restoration.
But within this narrow structure of upper-class loyalism there are irksome limitations on Charles’s independence. His efforts to extend religious toleration to his Nonconformist and Roman Catholic subjects are sharply rebuffed in 1663, and throughout his reign the House of Commons thwarts the more generous impulses of his religious policy. A more pervasive and damaging limitation is on his financial independence. Although the Parliament votes the king an estimated annual income of £1,200,000, Charles has to wait many years before his revenues produce such a sum, and by then the damage of debt and discredit is irreparable. He is incapable of thrift and finds it painful to refuse petitioners. With the expensive disasters of the Second Anglo-Dutch War of 1665–67 the reputation of the restored king sinks to its lowest level. His vigorous attempts to save London during the Great Fire of September 1666 cannot make up for the negligence and maladministration that leads to England’s naval defeat in June 1667.
Charles clears himself by dismissing his old adviser, Edward Hyde, and tries to assert himself through a more adventurous foreign policy. So far, his reign has made only modest contributions to England’s commercial advancement. The Navigation Acts of 1660 and 1663, which are prompted by the threat to British shipping by the rise of the Dutch carrying trade, are valuable extensions of Cromwellian policies, and the capture of New York in 1664 is one of his few gains from the Dutch. Although marriage to Princess Catherine of Braganza of Portugal in 1662 brings him the possession of Tangier and Bombay, they are of less strategic value than Dunkirk, which he sells to Louis XIV in 1662. He Is, however, prepared to sacrifice much for the alliance of his young cousin. Through his sister Henrietta Anne, Duchess of Orléans, he has direct contact with the French court, and it is through her that he negotiates the startling reversal of the Protestant Triple Alliance (England, the Dutch Republic, Sweden) of 1668. By the terms of the so-called Secret Treaty of Dover of May 1670, not only does England and France join in an offensive alliance against the Dutch, but Charles promises to announce his conversion to Roman Catholicism. If this provokes trouble from his subjects, he is assured of French military and financial support. He sees to it that the conversion clause of the treaty is not made public.
This clause, which is the most controversial act of Charles II’s reign, can be explained as a shortsighted bid for Louis XIV’s confidence. In this, however, it fails. Louis neither welcomes Charles’s intentions nor believes in them, and, in the event, it is only upon his deathbed that Charles is received into the Roman Catholic Church. But he has now fatally compromised himself. Although he subsequently attempts to pursue policies independent of Louis, he remains bound to him by inclination as well as by the fear of blackmail. More seriously, he has lost the confidence of his subjects, who deplore the French alliance and distrust the whole tendency of his policies.
Other circumstances deepen Englishmen’s discontent with their king. By the 1670s the miscarriages of the queen have reduced hopes that Charles will have a legitimate heir, and in 1673 the second marriage of his brother James, Duke of York, to Mary of Modena, increases the possibility of the Catholic line of succession, for James’s conversion to the Roman church is well known. But it is for his autocratic character as much as for his religion that James is feared as his brother is not, and it is on his brother’s behalf that Charles eventually has to face the severest political storm of his reign.
The Popish Plot of 1678 is an elaborate tissue of fictions built around a skeleton of even stranger truths. The allegations of Titus Oates, a former Anglican cleric who has been expelled from a Jesuit seminary, that Roman Catholics plan to murder Charles to make James king, seem to be confirmed by scraps of evidence of which Charles is justifiably skeptical. But he is obliged to bow before the gusts of national hysteria that seek to bar his brother from the line of succession. Between 1679 and 1681, Charles very nearly loses control of his government. Deprived of his chief minister, the Earl of Danby, who has been compromised by his negotiations with France, he has to allow Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 2nd Earl of Shaftesbury, and his Whig supporters, who uphold the power of the Parliament—men whom he detests—to occupy positions of power in central and local government. Three general elections produce three equally unmanageable parliaments, and, although Charles publicly denies the legitimacy of his first son, the Protestant Duke of Monmouth, he has to send his Catholic brother James out of the country and offer a plan of limitations that will bind James if he comes to the throne. The plan proves to be unacceptable both to the Whigs and to James, and, when Charles falls seriously ill in the summer of 1679, there is real danger of civil conflict.
But Charles keeps his nerve. He defends his queen against slanders, dismisses the intractable parliaments, and recovers control of his government. His subjects’ dread of republican anarchy proves stronger than their suspicion of James, and from March 1681, when he dissolves his last Parliament, Charles enjoys a nationwide surge of loyalty almost as fervent as that of 1660. He has made yet another secret treaty with France and in addition to a French subsidy can now count upon a healthy public revenue. Reforms at the Treasury, which he inaugurates in 1667, provide the crown with a firm basis of administrative control that is among Charles II’s most valuable legacies to English government.
As a result of these actions, Charles, who dies on February 6, 1685, at Whitehall in London, is able to end his reign in the kind of tranquil prosperity he has always sought.
