The Stuarts in England : III Trivia Quiz

Answer: General George Monck

Richard Cromwell, who didn't have the confidence of the army, was forced out of power in May 1659. The army recalled the 'Rump Parliament' - that is, the members of parliament who had survived the army's purge prior to Charles I's execution. There was an increasing struggle, however, between parliament and the army, and General Monck, commander of the English forces in Scotland, marched south to London to sort things out.

He initiated the recall of the Long Parliament - the second parliament Charles I had called in 1640, including the members purged before his execution. Seeing that the tide of turning in his favour, Charles II issued the Declaration of Breda on 4 April 1660, outlining the conditions of his acceptance of the English crown, should it be offered to him.

It promised a free pardon to all his enemies, save some who had signed his father's death warrant, and (more importantly) it promised the payment of Monck's soldiers. In England, the Long Parliament voted for its own dissolution and the Convention Parliament, consisting mostly of royalists, was assembled. On receiving the Declaration of Breda, the Convention Parliament declared that Charles II had been King of Britain since his father's execution and proceeded, with great irony, to beg him to return to England to be their king. Charles, of course, didn't need asking twice. With his sister the Princess Royal, his nephew William of Orange and his brothers the dukes of York and Gloucester, Charles travelled triumphantly to the Hague, where the Stuarts were suddenly guests of honour.

The Queen of Bohemia, delighted by the turn of events, was given pride of place next to Charles at the various banquets which followed - "he useth me more like a Mother than an Aunt," she reported. The British royal family had suddeny become the most popular people in town. The Queen of Bohemia was visited by, among others, Samuel Pepys, who later wrote that she was 'a very debonair lady'. The Queen was told not to worry about her many debts - the King would see to it that parliament would pay them.

Answer: The Royal Charles

It had previously been called the 'Naseby' but was hastily re-christened. Charles landed on 23 May, and arrived in London on 29 May, his thirtieth birthday. It was a triumphant and elaborate procession. Before leaving Holland, he had asked the States General to be kind to his sister and her little son. Now that Mary's brother was King of England and Scotland, and not a mere exile, the States were far kinder. People in England were falling over themselves to gain King Charles's favour. Scotland was freed from nine years of English occupation on 23 August, its government returning to Scottish hands. Six days later, parliament passed the act of Indemnity and Oblivion, which pardoned all Cromwell's supporters, excepting those who had actually signed Charles I death warrant. Thirty-one of the fifty-nine people who had signed it were still alive.

In the end twelve of them were executed. The bodies of Cromwell, John Bradshaw and Henry Ireton were exhumed and hanged.

Answer: 18 September

The Duke of Gloucester, who had returned with his brothers to England, died of smallpox. He had never been reconciled to his mother, Henrietta Maria, after their religous arugment, and she was much distressed, as indeed were the whole family. The Princess of Orange, who heard of it just before her departure from Holland, spent the entire uncomfortable journey grieving and weeping.
The shock and sadness of Henry's death was to be followed by a scandal. By October England was teeming with rumours that the child being carried by Anne Hyde - Sir Edward's daughter - was fathered by the Duke of York, and, even more scandalously, the two had been secretly married. Both rumours, as it happened, turned out to be true, provoking a massive family row. Anne's father, Sir Edward, was so mortified that he tried to convince the King to have his daughter shipped off to the Tower. James strenuously denied that he had ever married Anne, and coaxed some of his more brazen friends into claiming that they could also be possible fathers of the child. In the midst of this, Queen Henrietta Maria arrived from France, determined to put a stop to what she regarded as a shocking, distasteful business.
King Charles II, however, was having none of it. He commanded James to honour his marriage to Anne, visited her in her lying in, and made her father Earl of Clarendon. James and his mother eventually reconciled themselves to the situation (Pepys said that James was led in everything save his codpiece by his intelligent wife) but the Princess of Orange was horrified to have as a sister-in-law a woman who had once been her lady-in-waiting. The Duchess of York gave birth to a son, tactfully named Charles, on 22 October 1660. He was styled Duke of Cambridge, but lived only seven months.
Sadly, fate had yet another death in store for the House of Stuart. The Princess of Orange had been unwell ever since her arrival in London. She fell ill a week before Christmas with smallpox. When her brother Henry had suffered with it, his doctors had been accused of not bleeding him enough. Determined not to repeat the 'mistake' with Mary, they bled her so much she had no strength left. She calmly made her will on Christmas Eve morning, appointing Charles and her mother as her son's guardians. She died, aged twenty-nine. Her brother was distraught, as was the Queen of Bohemia, who wrote "I shall never forget her memory. We lived almost twenty years together and always loved one another."

Answer: Eighteen

It was called that because it was packed with royalists, and King Charles (understandably) saw no reason to dissolve it for another eighteen years. It proceeded to dismantle every act passed during the Commonwealth, and Charles II was restored to every power his father had enjoyed. The Triennial Act, which had provided for parliament being called every three years, was repealed and replaced by another act of the same name, which stated (rather pointlessly) that parliament could be called every three years if the King wished it. Once established, one of Charles's first acts had been to reward those who had helped him escape after Worcester, including Jane Lane and the Penderels, with pensions. Father Huddlestone was rewarded later, being given a place in the household of Charles's wife.
Meanwhile, in August 1660 the Queen of France, Anne of Austria, had approached Henrietta Maria with a proposal that Minette could marry her younger son, the Duke d'Orleans. Both Charles II and Henrietta Maria agreed readily and parliament voted her a dowry of £40,000. Three days after Mary's funeral, Minette and her mother set out for France once more. Proceedings were delayed, since the papal dispensation allowing the marriage of first cousins did not arrive till March, and Philippe, Minette's prospective husband (and a notorious bisexual) sulked because of the attentions being paid to his fiancee by the Duke of Buckingham (son of Charles I's favourite). The marriage finally took place on 31 March 1661. Minette was now the Duchess d'Orleans, Madame de France.
Back in England, King Charles was crowned with much pomp on 23 April, in a ceremony estimated to have cost parliament some £30,000.

Answer: Anne

Anne Fitzroy, daughter of King Charles, was born on 25 February 1661. Her mother was Barbara Palmer, nee Villiers, Countess of Castlemaine, a grasping woman who was widely detested. Anne was the first child she bore the King, but she wasn't his first illegitimate child - in fact, by 1661, he had four living children.

The eldest, the son of Lucy Walter, had been designated Duke of Monmouth. He was a handsome, lively lad, popular at Charles's court. The second, the daughter of Charles and Elizabeth Killigrew was cumbersomely named Charlotte Jemima Henrietta Maria Fitzroy, and had been born in 1650.

Then there were the two children of Catherine Pegge, Charles Fitzcharles (born 1657, later Earl of Plymouth) and Catherine Fitzcharles (born 1658). Charles saw impending marriage as no reason to alter his habits.

After brief negotiations, he was betrothed to Princess Caterina (Catherine, as she was called in England) of Braganza, the daughter of the King of Portugal, and married her on 3 May 1662.

She was an unpopular choice, being Catholic, but brought Britain the ports of Tangier and Bombay and a dowry of £360,000. The new queen was a quiet, retiring, modestly pretty woman, and Queen Henrietta Maria approved at once. Lady Castlemaine, however, was less thrilled, and persuaded Charles to appoint her as one of his wife's ladies-in-waiting. Not unnaturally, Catherine was furious, but in the end had to accept the situation, which she did with considerable equanimity.

Answer: Mary

Lady Mary of York, as she was known, was born on 30 April 1662. The birth went virtually unnoticed, partly because of the child's sex and partly because the court was still busy celebrating Charles II's marriage. Mary's godparents were the Duke of Cumberland (we know him as Prince Rupert of the Rhine, Charles II's glamorous cousin, who had returned to England following the Restoration, and was now a member of the Privy Council) and Elizabeth Charlotte ('Liselotte'), the daughter of Charles Louis, the Winter Queen's eldest son.
Speaking of the Winter Queen, she had returned to London in 1661, the city she left as a young bride in 1613, and had been comfortably lodged in the London home of a friend, Lord Craven. Charles II visited her dutifully and gave her an income of £1,000 a month, also promising that parliament would pay all the arrears of the pension settled on her at the time of her marriage. When she heard of Charles's engagement, she wrote a kind letter to Catherine, who replied that she would look on Elizabeth as her mother in England and would try to be as a daughter to her. She moved into a house in Leicester Fields belonging to the Earl of Leicester on 29 January 1662. Prince Rupert was with his mother on 10 February when she had a haemorrhage from the lungs. Charles came to see her immediately, and she begged him to ensure her creditors were paid in full. As she lay dying, she could look back on a long eventful life - growing up in Linlithgow Palace, listening to stories of her famous grandmother Mary Stuart, the disturbance of the Gunpowder Plot, her time in Heidelberg as a happy young bride, enchanting all who met her, or even her coronation in Prague as Queen of Bohemia what must have seemed a life time ago. Elizabeth Stuart, Winter Queen of Bohemia, died soon after midnight on 13 February, the eve of what would have been her forty-ninth wedding anniversary.
Very few Londoners could remember her departing England as a young bride, so her death caused little stir. She was known to them only as the mother of the famous Prince Rupert. Rupert, in fact, was her only child to attend her funeral in Westminster Abbey. The diarist John Evelyn, reflecting on Elizabeth's life in his diary, said that a lesser woman would have been destroyed by the many tribulations endured by her. As for her children, Edward died in 1664 (his daughters made good marriages - his great-grandchildren included many French nobles, a duke of Modena and two archduchesses of Austria). He was followed by Charles Louis and Elizabeth (who had become a Protestant abbess) in 1680, and the famous 'Rupert le Diable' in 1682 (after his retirement, this remarkable man had become a founding member of the Royal Society). Louise Hollandine, who had caused her mother so much distress by her conversion, died in 1709, and the youngest, Sophie of Hanover, lived until 1714, only missing her chance of becoming Queen of Britain by some weeks.

Answer: Queen of Spain

Both Minette and 'Monsieur' were greatly disappointed by the child's sex. Minette had been a success at the French court, everyone charmed by her prettiness and vivacity - everyone, that is, except her husband, who was insanely jealous. He flaunted his male lovers before her, causing her great distress. Her brother-in-law, Louis XIV, was very fond of her, leading to rumours of an affair between the two.
Back in England, her brother had many matters to occupy him (including the birth of another child to Lady Castlemaine, this one a son, named Charles Fitzroy, and later made Duke of Southampton). That same year, he sold Dunkirk (which had been won by Cromwell) to his cousin the French King for £40,000. Less happily, Queen Catherine had a miscarriage. Charles was briefly diverted by the lovely Frances Stuart, called 'La Belle Stuart', but she led him on a merry chase before eloping with the Duke of Richmond in 1667, no doubt to the satisfaction of Lady Castlemaine, who gave birth to another of the King's children, Henry Fitzroy, in September 1663, her position apparently unassailable, something which the poor Queen had become reconciled to.
1663 saw another royal birth - on 12 July the Duchess of York had a son, James, made Duke of Cambridge. The King acted as godfather to Minette's second child, a son, born 16 July 1664, named Philippe Charles and styled Duke of Valois. Charlotte Fitzroy, Charles's second daughter (her mother, of course, was Lady Castlemaine) was born on 5 September 1664; she grew up to be her father's favourite. The birth of the Lady Anne of York on 6 February 1665 seemed to indicate that the Stuart dynasty was thriving, but there was trouble ahead.

Answer: James, Duke of York

James, together with Lord Arlington, had been pushing for the war for a long time, convinced that it was bring glory to England. They took offence at certain Dutch ships not saluting the English flag (hardly a good reason to go to war). English ships began attacking Dutch settlements in North America, and when the Dutch retaliated, the English used this as an excuse to declare war. At first things went well, with a great victory for the English at the Battle of Lowestoft in June. From then, however, things got steadily worse - both France and Denmark declared war on Britain in 1666. The war ended in humiliation in 1667, when the Dutch fleet sailed up the Thames and the Medway and destroyed fifteen English ships, as well as towing away the 'Royal Charles'. The Treaty of Breda in July 1667 concluded the ill-advised conflict; it allowed England to retain New Amsterdam (renamed New York in James's honour) while the Dutch kept Surinam.
The war was an unmitigated disaster for England, the people wanted someone to blame. They found that someone in Edward Hyde, Charles's chief adviser. Charles advised him to go into exile rather than face charges of treason. The years 1665-1667 had not been successful on a personal level either. The Great Plague of 1665 was at one point so severe that it claimed 7000 lives a week. And though the Duchess of York had another son, Charles, Duke of Kendal, on 4 July 1666, Minette's little son Philippe Charles died in December, and the Queen had another miscarriage. In between these deaths was the famous Great Fire of London in September 1666, with Charles, together with James and Charles's son Monmouth, taking to the streets to fight the fire themselves. The fire left old London completely gutted, and thousands of poor Londoners homeless.
Then, in 1667, the Duke of York's two sons, the Dukes of Cambridge and Kendal, died on 12 and 4 July respectively, leaving the Yorks with only two surviving children, Mary and Anne. This was soon altered with the birth of Edgar on 14 September; he too was given the unlucky Cambridge title.

Answer: Henrietta

Far more importantly than the birth of another daughter, the Duke of York converted to Catholicism around this time, probably encouaged by his wife. The King, knowing what effect this would have in the increasingly sectarian Britain (he was frequently coming into conflict with his parliament on the subject of toleration for Catholics) urged them to keep it secret for the time being.
On 27 August 1669, Minette gave birth to her last child. To Monsieur's fury, it was another girl - Anne-Marie. Minette had been cheered in 1668 by a visit from her nephew, the Duke of Monmouth, but the visit was ruined by Monsieur's jealousy of Monmouth's closeness to his wife. She was kept busy, however, by Louis XIV using her as a go between to sound out Charles with the idea of a possible Anglo-French treaty. Charles was playing a dangerous game indeed. The draft of the treaty said that Charles would announce his conversion to Catholicism as soon as possible, and receive 2 million livres from Louis to put down the expected rebellion. Louis also agreed to send 6000 troops to England to put down any disturbances. In return, Charles was to join with France in declaring war on Holland. He would then be granted 3 million livres a year while hostilities lasted. There was talk of Minette being sent to England to negotiate the treaty personally with her brother.
Minette was still lying-in when she heard that her mother, the seemingly indestructible Queen Henrietta Maria, had died at Colombes on 31 August, aged fifty-nine. She was followed to the grave by her namesake, Lady Henrietta of York, who died on 15 November, leaving Mary, Anne and Edgar as the only children in the York nursery. Queen Catherine, meanwhile, had a stillborn child on 7 June 1669; it was becoming increasingly obvious that the King would father no children by her.

Answer: Dover

Minette, trapped in a loveless marriage, concentrated all her love on her eldest brother, who greeted her at Dover with the Dukes of York, Monmouth and Cumberland (Prince Rupert). Monsieur, Minette's husband, had given her permission to go to England with very bad grace, but she resolved to enjoy herself to the full, as well as carrying out her very important diplomatic mission.

Her job, since most of the actual hard negotiating had already been done, was to convince Charles to declare war on the Dutch before converting to Rome, since the war interested Louis far more than the conversion. Charles, who probably never intended to honour the promise of converting, agreed readily enough, and the treaty was signed on 1 June.

A grateful Louis sent Minette a message giving her permission to stay another ten or possibly twelve days. Queen Catherine and the Duchess of York came down to Dover from London, and there was a little party to celebrate both the tenth anniversary of the Restoration and the King's fortieth birthday. Charles had also become a father once again that May, but this time the mother was not Lady Castlemaine, but a Drury Lane actress called Nell Gwynne, possessed of a ready wit and a pretty figure.

The child, named Charles Beauclerk, was later made Earl of Burford and Duke of St Albans. Lady Castlemaine, who had converted to Catholicism, was made Duchess of Cleveland that June as a parting gift from the King. He also gave her Nonsuch Palace, which she later had demolished. Though she bore another child, Barbara (born 1672), Charles was probably not the father, though he acknowleged the child (the father was most likely John Churchill, future Duke of Marlborough). Minette's visit marked her first meeting with Queen Catherine, with whom she became friends, and the Duchess of York, who had grown very fat and self-important. She was able to tell the Duchess that the Lady Anne of York, sent to Henrietta Maria in France some time before because of a recurring eye problem, was now in her own household. When it was finally time for Minette to leave, Charles showered her in presents, including the money to build a chapel at Chaillot in memory of their mother. Many tears were shed, and Charles turned back three times to kiss and hug his little sister, before she finally had to go. When she arrived back in France, Louis, satisfied, graciously paid all her travelling expenses. Then, to the shock and distress of the Kings of Britain and France, Minette died on 30 June 1670, after nine hours of agony. She was only twenty-six. Rumours that she had been poisoned spread quickly, but an autopsy revealed she had in fact died of peritonitis. Sixteen months after her death, Monsieur married again, this time to Liselotte of the Palatinate, granddaughter of the Winter Queen and childhood companion of William of Orange.

Answer: Prince William of Orange

Tensions were running very high at the time, particularly since the Duchess of York admitted to being a Catholic in August, sparking many rumours (true) that her husband, the heir to the throne, was a Catholic too. As it was, the arrival of William, Charles's twenty-year-old Protestant nephew, was welcomed by the people. William, abstentious and considered dull by Charles, was shocked by the King's 'frivolous' ways.
The year 1671 began with a birth - the Duchess of York, in spite of being in the advanced stages of cancer, had a daughter, Catherine, on 9 February. After Minette's death, little Lady Anne had been sent back to England, but the York household was soon struck by an all too familiar tragedy - death. Anne Hyde died on 31 March, and was follwed in June by Edgar and in December by Catherine. The only consolation to the Stuarts was the birth of James Beauclerk, Charles's second son by Nell Gwynne, on Christmas Day 1671.
These deaths left the Ladies Mary and Anne as second and third in line to the throne respectively, and in an attempt to soothe Protestant sensibilities, Charles declared them children of the state so they would be brought up Protestants. Such measures were neccessary since, on 15 March 1672, Charles had issued the 'Royal Declaration of Indulgence' which suspended all penal laws against Catholics. Needless to say, parliament was less than happy - they claimed that the King had no right to just abolish laws made by parliament. There was also unhappy about England's declaration of war (with France) against the Dutch, and refused to fund the war. A further cause of complaint was Charles's new mistress, the Catholic Louise de Keroualle (who bore the King a son, Charles Lennox, on 29 July).
Because of this, Charles was forced to repeal his Declaration and to consent to the Test Act, which barred all Catholics from public office (incidentally, this forced the Duchess of Cleveland, formerly Lady Castlemaine, to resign as a lady of the bedchamber). The Duke of York's conversion also became public knowlege when he refused to take the Anglican sacrament in April, and in June he resigned as Lord High Admiral under the Test Act. James further inflamed the situation by his marriage, on 30 September 1673, to a Catholic princess, Mary Beatrice of Modena.
Meanwhile, the war with Holland ended in defeat (once again) in 1674, and the King's inner circle, or 'Cabal' (Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashely-Cooper and Lauderdale) disintergrated.

Answer: Katherine Laura

Sadly, little Katherine died aged only eight months. The new Duchess of York, Mary Beatrice, was a kind and attentive stepmother, and grew attatched to her young stepdaughters, especially Mary. She had been introduced to Mary and her sister Anne by their father as a new 'playmate' - she had been only fifteen when she married James.

The King, with his usual charm, hit it off with his new sister-in-law immediately, though he could do nothing about her obvious unpopularity - people whispered that she was the Pope's daughter.

The poor young woman, who had a miscarriage the day after Katherine Laura's death, was so far not finding life in England easy. The King himself, though briefly diverted by an affair with another Italian woman, the Duchess of Mazarin, could not ignore growing tensions in parliament. Catholics were regarded with great suspicion, and the very idea of the Duke of York, a Catholic, being their next king filled many people with horror. For the first time, there were calls for the King to divorce Queen Catherine and marry a Protestant wife who could give him an heir.

In the middle of this, the Duchess of York gave birth to a daughter, Isabella, on 18 August 1676.

Answer: 12

William had, of course, been born in 1650, and Mary in 1662. Mary had apparently given no thought to her future, and was absolutely horrified at the very thought of marrying William. James, her father, was very unhappy about the marriage too, but deferred to his brother's wishes. Mary was now a pretty girl, tall (five feet eleven to her fiance's five foot six) with chestnut hair and a Latin, feverish sort of charm no doubt inherited from the family of her grandmother, Henrietta Maria. William, on the other hand, was dour, hook nosed and unfashionable - he wore his dark hair loose, not bothering with the wigs fashionable at his uncle's court.
The two were married in St James's Palace on 4 November, William's twenty-seventh birthday. Mary was miserable, William solemn and James sour. In fact, the only member of the family to show any liveliness was (predictably) the King himself, who joked his way throughout the ceremony. He urged the bishop to hurry up, in case the heavily pregnant Mary Beatrice be delivered of a son and so render the marriage pointless. When William had to endow Mary with all his worldly goods, he placed a handful of gold coins on the prayerbook, the King urged her to scoop it all up, for 'twas clear gain'! Then came the ceremonial 'bedding' of the couple - Mary was undressed by Queen Catherine, the Duchess of York and the Duchess of Monmouth (nee Anna Scott, the wife of Charles's eldest bastard). The King, still in high good humour, closed the bed curtains with a flourish, crying 'now, nephew, to your work! Hey, St George for England!'
Mary Beatrice did indeed have a son three days after the wedding, much to William's annoyance. But smallpox was rife (Lady Anne went down with it, so Mary couldn't see her before leaving England) and the baby, Charles, died of it barely a month after his birth.
Mary was once again in tears when she and William had to leave England. She begged the Duchess of Monmouth to look after her sister Anne, bid goodbye to her father and stepmother and was not comforted in the least by Queen Catherine reminding her that she, too, had left her home country to come to a foreign land and marry a man she didn't know. 'Yes, Madam,' Mary replied tearfully, 'But you came into England; I am going out of England.'
As it happened, it didn't take long for Mary to settle in Holland. Unlike her aunt and namesake, William's mother, she was popular with the Dutch and eager to please them. She also fell in love with William, and obeyed him in everything. Sadly, she had a miscarriage in April 1678.

Answer: All of these

Oates, a defrocked clergyman, began spouting this kind of nonsense. These ramblings would have gone unnoticed at any other period in English history. As things stood, fanatical Protestants were all too ready to belief that the Jesuits, together with the Pope and the King of France, were plotting a Catholic crusade against England! Oates implicated everyone he could - he named just about every prominent Catholic in the land and claimed they were in a plot to kill the King. Though both Charles II and his spymaster the Earl of Danby were skeptical, Oates's claims captured the public imagination.
In March 1679, Charles sent the increasingly unpopular Duke and Duchess of York (who, the previous year had lost another child, Elizabeth) to Brussels in an attempt to protect them. Earlier that same year, he had dissolved the seemingly unending Cavalier Parliament. The second parliament of his reign assembled in March 1679, but the King prorogued it in May and dissolved it in July. The Earl of Shaftesbury (Antony Ashley-Cooper, once a member of Charles's 'Cabal'), who had emerged as the leader of the anti-Catholic 'Whig' party, was furious, and encouraged Oates to attack the royal family directly. Oates claimed that Queen Catherine was conspiring to murder the King. Charles, who was always very quick to shoot down any attack on his wife, cross examined Oates, revealed his story to be full of holes and ordered his arrest. He was released by parliament, however, who acted as his protector.
1680 brought further troubles. The Whigs were disappointed by the lack of a Protestant heir in the next generation - by February, the Princess of Orange had had three stillbirths, and it was now feared she would never conceive again. In Britain, anti-Catholic hysteria was reaching fever pitch, hatred against the Yorks at an all time high - Mary Beatrice's secretary, Edward Coleman, had been executed for his supposed part in the Popish Plot. People were demanding that Charles disinherit James and install his son, the Duke of Monmouth as his heir, or divorce Catherine and remarry. Once Charles made it clear that he would not tolerate any insult against his queen, it became a fully fledged Monmouth vs James war. On 2 June, Charles publicly denied that he had ever married Monmouth's mother, Lucy Walter, but rumours continued to circulate that a wedding had taken place, and that the marriage contract was in a secret black box.
Louise de Keroualle, Charles's French mistress, was also hated by the mob, who attacked Nell Gwynne's carriage thinking it to be hers, provoking the actress's famous protestation: 'Be civil, good people, for I am the Protestant whore!'
Matters were not helped by the King's serious illness in August 1679, which prompted the Duke of York's return from Brussels, though he was soon packed off again, this time to Scotland. He did not return from there until June. Charles had summoned a third parliament in July 1679, but had repeatedly prorogued it, and it was not until November 1680 that it was able to sit for any length of time. Its first action was to pass a bill excluding James from the throne. When the bill reached the House of Lords, the King (who was not in a particularly good mood, his son James Beauclerk having died that year aged nine) attended every debate, making his opposition to it clear - mostly for this reason, it was defeated by 63 votes to 30. The King then dissolved this parliament in January 1681.

Answer: the Oxford Parliament

The King summoned this parliament to meet in Oxford, which had always been a royalist stronghold and which was conveniently far away from the anti-Catholic hysteria of London. In the opening session, he attempted to compromise, telling parliament that if they allowed James to succeed in name, his daughter Mary and her husband could act as regents. But parliament rejected the plan, demanding James's total exclusion. So, on 28 March, a week after the parliament had opened, Charles was carried from his lodgings in Christchurch on a sedan chair, his robes and regalia concealed in another. He put these on in the geometry school and the Commons found him waiting, in full regalia, to pronounce the dissolution of parliament in a sentence. He then drove off to Windsor, leaving the Whigs in utter disarray. Because of the money he received from Louis, Charles was able to rule without parliament for the rest of his reign, content in the knowlege that he had upheld the Stuart succession.
As for the Yorks, their daughter Isabella had died in March 1681 aged only four, and was followed by another stillbirth. A daughter, Charlotte Maria, was born in 1682 but lived only two months. In June 1683 the 'Rye House Plot', a plan to kill both Charles and James was revealed, and the Duke of Monmouth was exiled, the King considering that he had ideas above his station. He was received warmly by William of Orange, whom Charles promptly barred from entering Britain. On 28 July of the same year, Lady Anne married Prince George of Denmark, a stolid Protestant with whom she was delighted. Her first child, a daughter, was stillborn in May 1684 (her stepmother had suffered two further stillbirths in 1683 and 1684).
In February 1685, the King fell ill, probably with kidney disease brought on by accidental mercury poisoning. Queen Catherine was so upset that she had to leave the room to compose herself. She sent word to the King, asking his forgiveness. He murmured, 'Alas, poor woman! She asks my forgiveness, I beg her's with all my heart.' It was his Catholic mistress, Louise de Keroualle, who took measures to ensure that the King died in the 'true faith'. After he expressed a wish to convert, she and the Duke of York arranged for the room to be cleared and ushered in Father John Huddlestone, the man who had helped Charles during the panicky flight after Worcester what must have seemed a lifetime ago. Huddlestone administered the last rites, and after he'd left, the courtiers were allowed back in, the King telling them he'd made his peace with God. But still he lingered. Humourous to the end, he apologised for being such an 'unconscionable' time 'a-dying'. Finally, on 6 February (Princess Anne's twentieth birthday), King Charles II, Britain's 'Merry Monarch' and the most successful of the Stuart monarchs, died, aged fifty-four.