Mary of Modena (5 October 1658 – 7 May 1718) was the queen consort of King
James II of England and VII of Scotland.
Daughter of Alfonso IV d'Este, Duke of
Modena and Laura Martinozzi (niece of Jules
Cardinal Mazarin), she was born in Modena and christened Maria
Beatrice Eleanor Anna Margherita Isabella d'Este. She had a strict Roman Catholic upbringing, and thought briefly of becoming an abbess in an order of nuns founded by her mother. She was the candidate favoured by
Louis XIV to provide a suitable Roman Catholic bride for James, Duke of York and heir presumptive to the thrones of
England and Scotland, who had converted to Roman Catholicism. The marriage was celebrated by
proxy on 30 September 1673.
The marriage had urgent dynastic and political aspects. James had two Protestant
daughters, Mary and Anne, from his
first marriage to Anne Hyde. A son by James' second marriage would be king one day, a Roman
Catholic king. Though Mary was beautiful and charming — Charles II quickly came
round to her — the people of England detested her for her Roman Catholicism. Scurvy wits lampooned her in broadsheets under the name "Madame East." Rumors spread that she was an agent of the pope, Clement X, who had pressed her case as a suitable bride. During the
so-called "Popish Plot" (1678), to which her secretary Coleman
was a victim, she and James discreetly went abroad.
The dynastic considerations demanded a son. Their first male child was stillborn
(1674), and numerous others died in infancy or early childhood. Following James's accession to the
throne in 1685, the question of whether Mary would ever bear a son became more significant, because
such a child would be brought up in the Roman Catholic faith and would be heir to the throne.
In 1688, Mary finally gave birth to a living son, James. The event caused much speculation. It was suggested that the child had been born dead
and a changeling smuggled into the room in a warming pan in order to conceal the death, or
that the Queen had never actually been with child. Broadsheets depicting the queen stuffing pillows into her gown or cuckolding
her husband with her confessor were common. For political reasons, a royal birth was a very public event, and many people would
have had to be privy to this unlikely conspiracy. Nevertheless the rumors were
disquieting enough that James called two extraordinary sessions of his Privy Council to
hear testimony proving that the Prince of Wales was his son by the Queen, though James'
Protestant daughters fervently disputed the child's legitimacy.
Mary's influence with James, whose attention was diverted by a series of mistresses,
favoured the Jesuits and absolutism on the
French model.
Within a few months of the heir's birth, the coup of Whig aristocrats called the Glorious Revolution erupted. Mary
consented to escape to France (10 December, 1688) with her
son. James's elder daughter, Mary, with her husband, William of Orange, had been
invited by the Whig magnates to take the throne.
In exile, as guests and dependants of Louis XIV at the Chateau of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Mary of Modena gave birth to
one more child, Princess Louisa Maria, 28 June 1692. (She died of
smallpox at the age of nineteen.)
When James died on 6 September 1701, Mary succeeded in
inducing Louis to recognize her son as king of England and Scotland, an act that accelerated English participation in the
War of the Spanish Succession. She supported Jacobite exiles to the best of her ability.
Mary of Modena died in Paris of breast
cancer. Her tomb, in the abbey of Chaillot, was destroyed during the French Revolution.
Dutchess County, New York was named in honor of her while she was Duchess
of York.
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