Whig historians would have us remember James II as a Catholic despot whose deposition was vital to the preservation of the British monarchy. His short but fractious reign was rife with tensions between Whig and Tory, Catholic and Protestant, and most importantly King and Parliament. The tumult only subsided when the Catholic king fled into exile, leaving his kingdom in the hands of a Protestant Dutchman, William of Orange.
As a young boy James was known to all as the Duke of York. He was concealed from the Parliamentarians during the Civil War while studying at Oxford, one of the last remaining Royalist strongholds. When the city of Oxford was under siege James fled, disguised as a woman, to the safer shores of the Hague and then to France to be with his mother. There he became an able soldier fighting alongside the French and the Spanish armies. He also…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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