Mary II: the Unknown Queen

A turbulent time for the Stuarts

Mary was born a Stuart princess in the restoration court of her uncle, Charles II, while the Stuart dynasty was experiencing a tumultuous seventeenth century. In 1649 during the English Civil War, Charles I was publicly executed outside the Banqueting House for tyranny. After a brief interregnum period, parliamentarian Oliver Cromwell then steered a republican state as Lord Protector.

However, the commonwealth did not survive and in 1660, the son of the beheaded king, Charles II, was voted into power. The English monarchy was restored, and Anglican bishops were allowed to be members of parliament once again.

With Charles II came a rebirth of literary culture, vast expansion in trade and colonial enterprise, and an opulent and playful court, characterised by indulgent parties, many mistresses, and gossip aplenty.

Mary’s early life in England

Mary and Anne lived outside of the court with their governess Frances Villiers, her husband George, and their four children. Mary’s nanny, Mrs Langford, affectionately called ‘Mam’ by Mary, lived with them too. Mary, Anne, and the Villiers sisters gossiped, read romance novels, and practised embroidery together.

Mary’s formal education, controlled by Charles II, included intense religious instruction in High Anglicanism by the trusted chaplain and Mary’s close companion, Dr Edward Lake.

Despite living apart, the young princesses were close to their parents and dined with them often. Although the Protestant Church of England was the official religion of the country, Mary’s mother, Anne Hyde converted to Catholicism in around 1670. She tragically died in 1672 from breast cancer when Mary was only 9.

A political marriage 

This happy time ended abruptly in November 1677, when Mary, aged 15, was told by her father that she would marry her first cousin, William of Orange, the following day. Unbeknownst to Mary, she had been betrothed to Dutch William from the age of nine, in an attempt by King Charles to secure a Protestant alliance between two of the most powerful countries in Northern Europe.

According to the diary of her chaplain, Mary cried all night and the next day. After the wedding ceremony, which was also on William’s 27th birthday, Mary’s uncle, Charles closed the bed curtains wishing for William to get to his ‘worke’ and produce a Stuart heir.

After a teary goodbye, Mary made the journey over to her new home in the Netherlands. Their married life began (and continued) with long periods spent apart, as William was often called away by duties and military campaigns, leaving Mary to worry for his safety. He held the republican position of stadtholder, much like prime minister and as Prince, he was also responsible for the Dutch military forces.

A quiet life in Holland

Mary occupied herself with canal trips on small boats, designing and furnishing her new residences, and prolifically writing letters back home to England. She spent her time with important Dutch noblewomen, and the ladies-in-waiting she had been presented with at the Dutch court.

Mary wrote to friends about her time singing, painting, and praying at the Dutch court. She developed a strong sense of her faith, exchanging bold letters with her father that questioned his Catholicism. Despite their confessional differences, the Duke and Duchess of York, James and Maria Beatrice, visited Mary twice - once during one of two of Mary’s pregnancies, which both ended in devastating loss.

Mary continued to write to Frances Apsley whilst abroad, interspersing flirtatious and playful letters with those that provided Frances with intensive shopping lists that left her in debt, discussed Frances’ miscarriages, and offered condolences for the illnesses of Frances’ parents. They also gossiped about happenings in the English court, including how they thought Anne was being misguided by one of her ladies-in-waiting.

Whilst in the Netherlands, Mary (poorly) kept track of her personal finances in an account book that still survives today. She had a penchant for hair powder, chocolate, and little ‘green birds with red heads’.

Route to the throne

Although Mary struggled to adjust to life in a new country with a new language, she wrote how she ‘grew accustomed’ to the less ceremonial and pompous nature of Dutch court life, which suited both her and William’s private natures.

In 1685 Charles II died without issue and Mary’s father James II was crowned the new king. Mary and her sister Anne were becoming increasingly wary of their father and stepmother’s Catholic influence. Their suspicion increased when, in 1688, Maria Beatrice birthed a male child, a Catholic heir to the throne.

This panicked parliamentarians and seven concerned bishops who dubbed themselves the ‘immortal seven’ wrote to Mary, asking her to take the throne from her father. Mary replied stating she would only rule alongside her husband, perhaps to help share the burden of such a task.

A dramatic coup d’etat followed, known as the ‘Glorious Revolution’. William left for England in November 1688 with a fleet of Dutch ships and effectively pushed James, Maria Beatrice and their children out of the country to France, where they established an opposing Jacobite court in exile. James was distraught at his daughters’ disloyalty.

A constitutional monarchy

Crowning two monarchs at the same time marked the beginning of new traditions within the British monarchy. The Bill of Rights, passed after the coronation in 1689, diverted power away from the crown and into parliament and a Religious Toleration Act allowed dissenting Protestant sects to worship separately from the Church of England. Catholics, however, were firmly banned from practicing.

In 1690, the Regency Act laid out how power was negotiated between the couple. It said that, despite their theoretical roles as equal monarchs and Mary’s greater legitimacy, Mary could only make definitive decisions when William was away, assisted by a council. Even then, these decisions had to be signed off by William.

Breakdown of her relationship with Anne

However, Mary was increasingly disapproving of the company Anne was keeping. Mary was first unsure of the motivations of Mary Cornwallis in her relationship to teenage Anne, calling her ‘ill compny’. Soon enough Anne favoured Lady Sarah Churchill, the Duchess of Marlborough, whom Mary viewed as an even more damaging influence. She told a friend that Anne was absolutely ‘governed’ by Sarah, who was politically ambitious and keen for her husband, John Churchill, to climb the ranks in the army.

Anne, who was probably having a romantic relationship with Sarah, did not respond well to Mary’s criticisms. Mary’s return and Mary returning to England as queen then began a series of arguments.

Her memoirs from 1689 describe that Anne avoided all opportunities of being alone with Mary after a disagreement about Anne’s revenue. They ‘parted ill friends’ after a confrontation about William’s treatment of Anne a few days later. Despite this, Anne still named her daughter Mary upon her birth in October 1691.

Mary opened her 1692 memoir with ‘This year began with family troubles of mine.’ Mary’s increased paranoia and anger at the actions of the Churchills led to a final argument between her and Anne, after which Anne was asked to vacate her lodgings. They did not reconnect before Mary’s premature death at the end of 1694.

Mary saw her ‘disagreeing [with Anne] as a punishment upon us for the irregularity by us committed upon the revolution’. This act caused her great pain, but she saw it as her duty to her native country.

Declining health

Mary suffered from poor eyesight as she grew older, often complaining of ‘sore eis’. She wrote about her ailments in her diaries and letters. In one, she discusses having a swollen face, which she believed occurred from standing by a window for too long.

Mary called her periods of mental and physical illness her ‘bouts of indisposition’. She often took the waters at Bath or sought retreat at quiet Hampton Court to combat these. Taking the waters was also a common treatment for infertility.

Miscarriages and pressure for an heir

In the first two years of her marriage, Mary lost two pregnancies. There was great pressure for her to conceive an heir to the throne as it was seen as a royal woman’s preliminary role.

There is no evidence to suggest Mary was pregnant after 1678, nor did William conceive with his alleged lover and one of Mary’s ladies in waiting, Elizabeth Villiers. Over time, as she became more convinced of her faith, Mary believed it was God’s will that she would not be a biological mother.

Mary II’s legacy

William wore a lock of Mary’s hair around his neck as he ruled alone, until his own death in 1702. As Mary and William did not have children, Mary’s sister Anne received the throne.

Mary’s story is not frequently remembered today, perhaps because of her role as a woman in a dual monarchy, and her short reign before an untimely death. However, the way parliament functions today is because of Mary and William’s rule. They diverted power from the crown to parliament, thus instigating the constitutional monarchy enacted in the United Kingdom now.

Her astute understanding of gendered power dynamics of the period meant she successfully allayed anxieties after the 1688 Revolution, and negotiated a positive image of the crown against William's poor reputation. All the while, as Bishop Tenison noted in her funeral sermon 'Her Wisdom shin'd very gloriously in Her Administration of Publick Affairs, for which She has received deservedly the Publick Thanks'.