ABSTRACT
On 11 December 1688, James II, anointed king of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, threw the Great Seal into the Thames and fled towards the coast. Apprehended at Sheerness, James must have thought his fate was sealed. Like his father, he too would make the short walk to the scaffold and the headsman’s axe. But his subjects did not want his blood. They wanted a Protestant monarchy and free parliaments. James’s son-in-law, William of Orange, who was Charles I’s eldest surviving grandson, fitted the bill. William entered London on 18 December 1688. On 23 December 1688 James left for France, never to return. James’s supporters took for themselves the Latin version of his name Jacobus and became Jacobites, a term that first appears in the State Papers in May 1690. 1
