A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second

Charles James Fox, the great Whig statesman who devoted his life to fighting monarchical excess, turns his piercing political intelligence to one of English history's most combustible moments: the accession of James II. Written with the benefit of hindsight, the king would flee within three years, Fox dissects James's opening months with the practiced eye of a man who understood power and its dangers intimately. He examines the political climate left by Charles II, the expectations surrounding James's promises of clemency, and the deep unease of a populace all too aware that this Catholic monarch had spent years scheming to circumvent Protestant succession. Fox's account is not mere chronicle but argument: a meditation on how liberty erodes, how crowns speak of peace while sharpening their swords, and why the lessons of 1685 would echo through every subsequent debate about the limits of royal authority. This is history written by a man who believed the past was a weapon, and who wielded it with devastating precision.