Mary II of England

Mary II of England

Mary II was Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1689 until her death from smallpox at age 32. She married her Protestant first cousin, William of Orange, in 1677. Although their father James, Duke of York, was Roman Catholic, Mary and her younger sister Anne were raised as Anglicans.

About Mary II of England in brief

Summary Mary II of EnglandMary II was Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1689 until her death from smallpox at age 32. She married her Protestant first cousin, William of Orange, in 1677. Although their father James, Duke of York, was Roman Catholic, Mary and her younger sister Anne were raised as Anglicans. Mary mostly deferred to William, a renowned military leader and principal opponent of Louis XIV, when he was in England. She did, however, act alone when William was engaged in military campaigns abroad, proving herself to be a powerful, firm, and effective ruler. Mary’s death left William as sole ruler until his own death in 1702. Mary was named after her ancestor, Mary, Queen of Scots, and her godparents included her father’s cousin, Prince Rupert of the Rhine. For most of her childhood, Mary was second in line to the throne after her father, King Charles II, who had no legitimate children. She was baptised into the Anglican faith in the Chapel Royal at St James’s, and was married to William III of Orange at the age of 15. Mary and William were publicly consummated on 4 November 1677 in St James’s Palace by Bishop Henry Compton. The marriage was attended by the royal family, with the King himself drawing himself to the bedcurtains. Mary accompanied her husband on a rough sea crossing to the Netherlands, after a delay of two weeks caused by bad weather, after that month later that month that Mary later that year married the Dutch Stadtholder, Prince Hubert of Rotterdam, in front of a crowd of 2,000 people in the town of Huisselaar.

For more information on Mary, visit: http://www.history.org.uk/mary-2/Mary-II-Queen-of-England-Scotland-and-Ireland-1689-1702-King-William-3-Orange-Martha-2-Mary-2.html. Mary is also known as Mary of Modena, or Mary Clorine, and as Mary Apsley, the pseudonym of a young girl who wrote to Mary’s younger sister, Frances. Mary wrote passionate letters to an older girl, Frances Apsly, the daughter of courtier Sir Allen Aapsley,  from 1662 to 1683. Mary died in 1701, and William was succeeded by her sister, Anne, who was born in 1662. Mary had a son, James Francis Edward, who became King James II of England and Scotland in 1685. James’s attempts at rule by decree led to his deposition in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the adoption of the English Bill of Rights. When James told Mary that she was to marry her cousin, he incorrectly assumed that it would improve his popularity among all the following Protestants. Mary told him: ‘We all that day we all that afternoon and the following afternoon and a tearful afternoon we were all that that day’