James II; Soldier and Sailor

London: Hamish Hamilton, 1972. Presumed First U.K. Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Good. xii, 323, [1] pages. Illustrated endpapers. Frontis illustration. Illustrations. Maps. Bibliography. Index. Some cover wear noted. Front of DJ cut off and pasted to verso of a free end page. No other part of DJ present. No Table of Contents page but no sign of a page having been removed. Major Chetwynd John Drake "Jock" Haswell (18 July 1919 - 21 January 2018), who also wrote as George Foster, was a British military and intelligence author and former British intelligence officer. He was "Author for Service Intelligence" 1966-1984. Haswell was trained at Sandhurst c. 1938/9 - 1941. He joined the Queen's Royal Regiment on 3 April 1941. Later in 1941 he was stationed in India, and saw local action. He was promoted Major on 3 July 1952. He retired from the army on 29 April 1960. Haswell's later work was mostly writing, continuing a thread from his military and intelligence work. His James II was reviewed in the Times of 29 July 1972 by Geoffrey Homes. James, Duke of York, brother of Charles II, commanded the French Army in Champagne and the Spanish Army in the Low Countries; he was offered the highest military command in Italy and the most senior naval post in Spain. As Lord High Admiral he led the English fleet into action in two great naval battles. 'A most glorious young Prince,' wrote one of his contemporaries. Yet to many he is only the King who threw away all the great advantages passed on to him when his brother died, and fled ignominiously into exile. James II and VII (14 October 1633 O.S. - 16 September 1701) was king of England and king of Ireland as James II, and king of Scotland as James VII from the death of his brother, Charles II, on 6 February 1685 until he was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. He was the last Catholic monarch of England, Scotland, and Ireland. His reign is now remembered primarily for struggles over religious tolerance, however, it also involved struggles over the principles of absolutism and the divine right of kings. His deposition ended a century of political and civil strife by confirming the primacy of Parliament over the Crown. James inherited the thrones of England, Ireland, and Scotland from his elder brother Charles II with widespread support in all three countries, largely because the principles of eligibility based on divine right and birth were widely accepted. Tolerance for his personal Catholicism did not extend to tolerance towards Catholicism in general, and the English and Scottish Parliaments refused to pass his measures. When James attempted to impose them by decree, this was met with opposition; thus it was a political principle, rather than a religious one, that ultimately led to his removal. In June 1688, two events turned dissent into a crisis; the first, on 10 June, was the birth of James's son and heir James Francis Edward, which raised the prospect of initiating a Roman Catholic dynasty and excluding his Anglican daughter Mary and her Protestant husband William III of Orange. The second was the prosecution of the Seven Bishops for seditious libel; this was viewed as an assault on the Church of England and their acquittal on 30 June destroyed his political authority in England. The anti-Catholic riots in England and Scotland that ensued led to a general feeling that only his removal from the throne could prevent a civil war. Leading members of the English political class invited William of Orange to assume the English throne; after he landed in Brixham on 5 November 1688, James's army deserted, and he went into exile in France on 23 December. In February 1689, a special Convention Parliament held that the king had "vacated" the English throne and installed William and Mary as joint monarchs, thereby establishing the principle that sovereignty derived from Parliament, not birth. James landed in Ireland on 14 March 1689 in an attempt to recover his kingdoms but, despite a simultaneous rising in Scotland, in April a Scottish Convention followed that of England, both finding that James had "forfeited" the throne and offered it to William and Mary. After his defeat at the Battle of the Boyne in July 1690, James returned to France, where he spent the rest of his life in exile at Saint-Germain, protected by Louis XIV. Beginning in the 20th century, some historians praised him for advocating religious tolerance.