List of Heirs of Scotland - Heirs To James VII

Heirs To James VII

At the time of James's accession he had no heir-apparent; of the three sons born to his late wife Anne Hyde and the one born to second wife, Mary of Modena, only one had survived past the age of three. The heiress-presumptive to the throne was therefore the King's eldest daughter

• Mary. She had married her first cousin William III, Prince of Orange in 1677 and lived with him in the Netherlands. Her half-brother
• James Francis Edward was born on 10 June 1688, and became heir-apparent, Duke of Rothesay and Duke of Cornwall at birth.

The King's Roman Catholic faith and policy of religious tolerance towards Catholics, particularly the Declaration of Indulgence, alarmed the Anglican hierarchy in his realm of England. James's imprisonment of seven Bishops who protested at his policy, and then the birth of a Catholic male heir, which raised the prospect of a Catholic dynasty on the throne, led a group of English noblemen to invite the King's Protestant nephew and son-in-law, William of Orange, to invade. This became known as the Glorious Revolution, and resulted in James's flight to France in December 1688. The English Parliament declared the throne vacant and offered it to William and his wife Mary. All these events in England had no bearing on the constitutional situation in Scotland, and it was only on 11 April 1689, the day of William and Mary's coronation in England, that the Estates of Scotland declared that James VII was no longer King, and offered the Crown jointly to the King and Queen of England. They accepted on 11 May, becoming William II and Mary II of Scots.