Death of Mary of Modena – The Forgotten Queen of England
Mary of Modena was born Maria Beatrice Eleonora Anna Margherita Isabella d’Este, on 5th October 1658.
She was the daughter of Alfonso IV Duke of Modena, and Laura Martinozzi.
Mary received an excellent education.
She spoke French and Italian fluently, had a good knowledge of Latin and mastered English.
Even as a young girl, Mary was extremely devout, and had a desire to become a nun.
Nevertheless, she was promised in marriage to the Prince of York, James II, the future King of England.
However determined the teenage Mary was to enter a convent, James wanted a beautiful bride.
Mary’s graceful face, startlingly lovely dark eyes, and black hair fit the bill.
From his first marriage to Anne Hyde, James had two daughters, Lady Mary and Lady Anne.
It was hoped that Mary would give him sons.
Mary was married to James by proxy on 30th September 1673.
Mary was only fifteen, and James was forty, and certainly by no means handsome.
James choice of a Catholic bride, proved widely unpopular.
The English public, who were predominantly Protestant, branded Mary as the “Pope’s daughter”.
As such, Mary’s life at court was very harsh.
She was despised by the ladies of the court, her husband was constantly unfaithful and four of her children had died.
Mary did, however, have a very good relationship with King Charles II.
King Charles II’s failure to produce an heir, meant it looked increasingly likely that his brother James would one day be king.
Charles II died in February 1685 and James and Mary became King and Queen of England.
The twenty-six-year-old Mary, was the first consort to be crowned in England in eighty years.
When Mary gave birth to Prince James Francis Edward in 1688 after years of fertility troubles, the response from Protestants and politicians, was to claim that the child was not Mary’s.
This was where the ‘warming pan’ conspiracy started.
It was suggested that the pregnancy had been a fake one, and that an orphaned baby had been smuggled into the queen’s bedchamber in a warming pan – so that it could be presented as Mary’s new prince!
James had secretly converted to Catholicism around 1668, and initially been accepted as a Catholic King – when he promised to support the Protestant religion.
However, the arrival of a Catholic heir Prince James Stuart, and James’ unpopular Catholic policies were a catalyst for the ‘Glorious Revolution’.
That winter, Mary, disguised as a washerwoman and clutching her child, made her escape on a stormy crossing to Calais.
King James II lost his grip on his country.
He left his crown to be seized by his daughter, the Protestant Mary II and her husband William III.
On 11th December 1688, the reign of James II and Mary of Modena was over.
Mary had been queen of England for just three years.
The exiled James joined Mary in France.
Here, they stayed at the expense of James’s first cousin King Louis XIV, who supported the Jacobite cause.
Mary continued to style herself ‘queen’, then ‘queen regent’ and ‘queen dowager’ for another thirty years, while in exile in France.
She tirelessly campaigned for her husband’s cause, selling her jewels, writing letters, and finding positions and food for the supporters that followed the king to France.
When her husband James died of a seizure on 16th September 1701, Mary continued to campaign for her son, James III, to be restored to the throne.
Mary dressed in mourning for the remainder of her life,
and sought refuge from the stresses of her exile at the Convent of the Visitations, Chaillot, near Paris.
Mary lived out the rest of her days at Chaillot in virtual poverty, unable to travel by her own means because all her horses had died, and she could not afford to replace them.
Mary, the forgotten Queen of England, died from cancer on 7th May 1718.
She was 59 years old.
Mary’s remains were interred in Chaillot among the nuns she had befriended.
🌹 Queen Mary in 1685.
By Willem Wissing
