For Thomas Babington Macaulay, the Glorious Revolution of 1688–9 demonstrated a ‘peculiar’ and definitively English character:

It was a revolution strictly defensive, and had prescription and legitimacy on its side. Here, and here only, a limited monarchy of the thirteenth century had come down unimpaired to the seventeenth century. Our parliamentary institutions were in full vigour. The main principles of our government were excellent. 

No wonder he chose to open his History of England with the short reign and sudden deposition of James II, a Catholic, in favour of the Protestant William of Orange and Mary, James’s elder daughter from his first marriage. These events exemplified, for Macaulay as for many others, the triumph of right over might, of freedom over despotism. From the vantage point of the losers, of course, the Glorious Revolution looked rather different. Among its many peculiar aspects was the fact that it was brought about by the arrival of a male heir. In the usual course of things, a queen’s position becomes a great deal more secure once she has produced a son. In this case, however, it led to her permanent expulsion from Britain and – eventually – the end of the Stuart line. 

James II’s consort was born Maria Beatrice d’Este in Modena. She grew up hoping to enter a convent. At the age of fifteen, however, she was shipped as a reluctant bride to England – a fate she declared worse than death by fire – having been charged by the pope with bringing Catholic princes into the world and thereby returning England to the true faith. The reigning monarch, Charles II, had no legitimate children to succeed him. The chilly yet fervid country in which she found herself cannot have seemed an auspicious environment for a young, devout, well-educated foreigner. James’s marriage was hugely unpopular; when news of it became public, effigies of the pope (predictably rumoured to be Maria’s father) were burned in the streets. Charles presided over a sleazy, libertine, aggressively outrageous court in which the status of women was calculated primarily according to their looks and availability (James, in contrast to his brother, preferred mistresses who were witty and plain). However, as Breeze Barrington is keen to stress, it was also a creative place in which women, under certain conditions, might be allowed to express their talents in music and drama.

James was twenty-five years older than his second wife and scarred with smallpox. Maria, who as a young bride burst into tears each time she saw him, learned to adapt and even to enjoy his company. Her day-to-day existence was an odd combination of opulence and suffering. For the first