Coordinates	45°30′″N73°40′″N
name	James II & VII
succession	King of England, Scotland and Ireland
moretext	(more...)
reign	6 February 1685 – 11 December 1688
coronation	23 April 1685
predecessor	Charles II
successor	William III & II and Mary II
spouse	Anne Hydem. 1660; dec. 1671Mary of Modenam. 1673; wid. 1701
issue	Mary II of England and ScotlandAnne of Great Britain''Henrietta FitzJames''''James FitzJames, 1st Duke of Berwick''''Henry FitzJames''James Francis Edward StuartLouisa Maria Teresa Stuart| issue-link #Issue
issue-pipe	among others
styles	''His Majesty'' King James II''His Majesty'' The KingThe Duke of York Prince James
house	House of Stuart
father	Charles I of England
mother	Henrietta Maria of France
birth date	October 14, 1633(N.S.: 24 October 1633)
birth place	St. James's Palace, London
death date	September 16, 1701 (N.S.)
death place	Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France
place of burial	Saint-Germain-en-Laye
Religion	Roman Catholicism
signature	JamesIISig.svg }}

James II & VII (14 October 1633 – 16 September 1701) was King of England and King of Ireland as James II and King of Scotland as James VII, from 6 February 1685. He was the last Catholic monarch to reign over the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Increasingly members of Britain's political and religious elite opposed him as too pro-French, too pro-Catholic, and with designs on being an absolute monarch. When he produced a Catholic heir, the tension exploded and leading nobles called on William III of Orange (his son-in-law and nephew) to land an invasion army from the Netherlands, which he did. James fled England (and thus was held to have abdicated) in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. He was replaced by William of Orange who became king as William III, ruling jointly with his wife (James's daughter) Mary II. Thus William and Mary, both Protestants, became joint rulers in 1689. James made one serious attempt to recover his crowns, when he landed in Ireland in 1689 but, after the defeat of the Jacobite forces by the Williamite forces at the Battle of the Boyne in the summer of 1690, James returned to France. He lived out the rest of his life as a pretender at a court sponsored by his cousin and ally, King Louis XIV.

James is best known for his belief in the Divine Right of Kings and his attempts to create religious liberty for English Roman Catholics against the wishes of the English Parliament. Parliament, opposed to the growth of absolutism that was occurring in other European countries, as well as to the loss of legal supremacy for the Church of England, saw their opposition as a way to preserve what they regarded as traditional English liberties. This tension made James's four-year reign a struggle for supremacy between the English Parliament and the Crown, resulting in his deposition, the passage of the English Bill of Rights, and the Hanoverian succession.

Birth and early life

James, the second surviving son of Charles I and Henrietta Maria of France, was born at St. James's Palace in London on 14 October 1633. Later that same year, James was baptized by William Laud, the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury. James was educated by tutors, along with his brother, the future King Charles II, and the two sons of the Duke of Buckingham, George and Francis Villiers. At the age of three, James was appointed Lord High Admiral; the position was initially honorary, but would become a substantive office after the Restoration, when James was an adult.

Civil War

James was invested with the Order of the Garter in 1642, and created Duke of York on 22 January 1644. As the King's disputes with the English Parliament grew into the English Civil War James stayed in Oxford, a Royalist stronghold. When the city surrendered after the siege of Oxford in 1646, Parliamentary leaders ordered the Duke of York to be confined in St. James's Palace. In 1648, he escaped from the Palace, aided by Joseph Bampfield and from there he went to The Hague in disguise. When Charles I was executed by the rebels in 1649, monarchists proclaimed James's older brother Charles II of England. Charles II was recognized by the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of Ireland and was crowned King of Scotland at Scone in Scotland in 1651. Although he was proclaimed King at Jersey Charles was unable to secure the crown of England and consequently fled to France and exile.

Exile in France

Like his brother, James sought refuge in France, serving in the French army under Turenne against the Fronde, and later against their Spanish allies. In the French army, James had his first true experience of battle where, according to one observer, he "ventures himself and chargeth gallantly where anything is to be done". In 1656, when his brother, Charles, entered into an alliance with Spain—an enemy of France—James was expelled from France and forced to leave Turenne's army. James quarrelled with his brother over the diplomatic choice of Spain over France. Exiled and poor, there was little that either Charles or James could do about the larger diplomatic situation, and James ultimately travelled to Bruges and (along with his younger brother, Henry) joined the Spanish army under Louis, Prince of Condé, fighting against his former French comrades at the Battle of the Dunes. During his term of service in the Spanish army, James became friendly with two Irish Catholic brothers in the Royalist entourage, Peter and Richard Talbot, and began to be somewhat estranged from his brother's Anglican advisers. In 1659, the French and Spanish made peace. James, doubtful of his brother's chances of regaining the throne, considered taking a Spanish offer to be an admiral in their navy. Ultimately, he declined the position; by the next year the situation in England had sufficiently changed, and Charles II was proclaimed King.

Restoration

First marriage

After Oliver Cromwell's death in 1658 and the subsequent collapse of the Commonwealth in 1660, Charles II was restored to the English throne. Although James was the heir-presumptive, it seemed unlikely that he would inherit the Crown, as Charles was still a young man capable of fathering children. Upon his brother's restoration, James was created Duke of Albany in Scotland, to go along with his English title, Duke of York. Upon his return to England, James produced an immediate controversy by announcing his engagement to Anne Hyde, the daughter of Charles's chief minister, Edward Hyde. In 1659, while attempting to seduce her, James promised he would marry Anne. Anne became pregnant in 1660, but following the Restoration and James's return to power, no one at the royal court expected a prince to marry a commoner, no matter what he had pledged beforehand. Although nearly everyone, including Anne's father, urged the two not to marry, they did so. The couple was married secretly, then went through an official marriage ceremony on 3 September 1660, in London. Their first child, Charles, was born less than two months later, but died in infancy, as did five further sons and daughters. Only two daughters survived: Mary (born 30 April 1662) and Anne (born 6 February 1665). Samuel Pepys wrote that James was fond of his children and his role as a father, writing that he played with them "like an ordinary father", a contrast to the distant parenting common to royals at the time. James's wife was devoted to him and influenced many of his decisions. Even so, he kept a variety of mistresses, including Arabella Churchill and Catherine Sedley, and was reputed to be "the most unguarded ogler of his time." With Catherine Sedley, James II had a daughter, Catherine Darnley (so named because James II was a descendant of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley). Anne Hyde died in 1671.

Military and political offices

After the Restoration, James was confirmed as Lord High Admiral, an office that carried with it the subsidiary appointments of Governor of Portsmouth and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. James commanded the Royal Navy during the Second (1665–1667) and Third Anglo-Dutch Wars (1672–1674). Following the raid on the Medway in 1667, James oversaw the survey and re-fortification of the southern coast. The office of Lord High Admiral, combined with his revenue from post office and wine tariffs (granted him by Charles upon his restoration) gave James a sufficient salary to keep a sizeable court household.

In 1664, Charles granted American territory between the Delaware and Connecticut Rivers to James. Following its capture by the English the former Dutch territory of New Netherland was named the Province of New York in James's honour. After the founding, the duke gave part of the colony to proprietors George Carteret and John Berkeley. Fort Orange, 240 kilometres (150 miles) north on the Hudson River, was renamed Albany after James's Scottish title. In 1683, he became the governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, but did not take an active role in its governance. James also headed the Royal African Company, a slave trading company.

In September 1666, his brother Charles put him in charge of firefighting operations for the Great Fire of London, in the absence of action by Mayor Thomas Bloodworth. While this was not strictly a political office, his actions and leadership were noteworthy. "The Duke of York hath won the hearts of the people with his continual and indefatigable pains day and night in helping to quench the Fire", wrote a witness in a letter on 8 September.

Conversion to Roman Catholicism and second marriage

James's time in France had exposed him to the beliefs and ceremonies of Catholicism; he and his wife, Anne, became drawn to that faith. James took Eucharist in the Roman Catholic Church in 1668 or 1669, although his conversion was kept secret for some time and he continued to attend Anglican services until 1676. In spite of his conversion, James continued to associate primarily with Anglicans, including John Churchill and George Legge, as well as French Protestants, such as Louis de Duras, the Earl of Feversham.

Growing fears of Catholic influence at court led the English Parliament to introduce a new Test Act in 1673. Under this Act, all civil and military officials were required to take an oath (in which they were required not only to disavow the doctrine of transubstantiation, but also denounce certain practices of the Catholic Church as superstitious and idolatrous) and to receive the Eucharist under the auspices of the Church of England. James refused to perform either action, instead choosing to relinquish the post of Lord High Admiral. His conversion to Catholicism was thereby made public.

Charles II opposed the conversion, ordering that James's daughters, Mary and Anne, be raised as Protestants. Nevertheless, he allowed James to marry the Catholic Mary of Modena, a fifteen-year-old Italian princess. James and Mary were married by proxy in a Catholic ceremony on 20 September 1673. On 21 November, Mary arrived in England and Nathaniel Crew, Bishop of Oxford, performed a brief Anglican service that did little more than recognise the Catholic marriage. Many of the British people, distrustful of Catholicism, regarded the new Duchess of York as an agent of the Pope.

Exclusion Crisis

In 1677, James reluctantly consented to his daughter Mary's marriage to the Protestant William of Orange (who was also James's nephew). James acquiesced after his brother Charles and William had agreed upon the marriage. Despite the Protestant marriage, fears of a potential Catholic monarch persisted, intensified by the failure of Charles II and his wife, Catherine of Braganza, to produce any children. A defrocked Anglican clergyman, Titus Oates, spoke of a "Popish Plot" to kill Charles and put the Duke of York on the throne. The fabricated plot caused a wave of anti-Catholic hysteria to sweep across the nation.

In England, the Earl of Shaftesbury, a former government minister and now a leading opponent of Catholicism, attempted to have James excluded from the line of succession. Some members of Parliament even proposed that the crown go to Charles's illegitimate son, James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth. In 1679, with the Exclusion Bill in danger of passing, Charles II dissolved Parliament. Two further Parliaments were elected in 1680 and 1681, but were dissolved for the same reason. The Exclusion Crisis contributed to the development of the English two-party system: the Whigs were those who supported the Bill, while the Tories were those who opposed it. Ultimately, the succession was not altered, but James was convinced to withdraw from all policy-making bodies and to accept a lesser role in his brother's government.

On the orders of the King, James left England for Brussels. In 1680, he was appointed Lord High Commissioner of Scotland and took up residence at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh in order to suppress an uprising and oversee royal government. James returned to England for a time when Charles was stricken ill and appeared to be near death. The hysteria of the accusations eventually faded, but James's relations with many in the English Parliament, including the Earl of Danby, a former ally, were forever strained and a solid segment turned against him.

Return to favour

In 1683, a plot was uncovered to assassinate Charles and James and spark a republican revolution to re-establish a government of the Cromwellian style. The conspiracy, known as the Rye House Plot, backfired upon its conspirators and provoked a wave of sympathy for the King and James. Several notable Whigs, including the Earl of Essex and the King's illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, were implicated. Monmouth initially confessed to complicity in the plot, implicating fellow-plotters, but later recanted. Essex committed suicide and Monmouth, along with several others, was obliged to flee into Continental exile. Charles reacted to the plot by increasing repression of Whigs and dissenters. Taking advantage of James's rebounding popularity, Charles invited him back onto the privy council in 1684. While some in the English Parliament remained wary of the possibility of a Catholic king, the threat of excluding James from the throne had passed.

Reign

Ascension to the throne

Charles died in 1685 after converting to Catholicism on his deathbed. Having no legitimate children, Charles was succeeded by his brother James, who reigned in England and Ireland as James II, and in Scotland as James VII. There was little initial opposition to his succession, and there were widespread reports of public rejoicing at the orderly succession. James wanted to proceed quickly to the coronation, and was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 23 April 1685. The new Parliament that assembled in May 1685, which gained the name of "Loyal Parliament", was initially favourable to James, and the new King sent word that even most of the former exclusionists would be forgiven if they acquiesced to his rule. Most of Charles's officers continued in office, the exceptions being the promotion of James's brothers-in-law, the Earls of Clarendon and Rochester, and the demotion of Halifax. Parliament granted James a generous life income, including all of the proceeds of tonnage and poundage and the customs duties. James worked harder as king than his brother had, but was less willing to compromise when his advisers disagreed.

Two rebellions

Soon after becoming king, James faced a rebellion in southern England led by his nephew, the Duke of Monmouth, and another rebellion in Scotland led by Archibald Campbell, the Earl of Argyll. Argyll and Monmouth both began their expeditions from Holland, where James's nephew and son-in-law, William of Orange, had neglected to detain them or put a stop to their recruitment efforts. Argyll sailed to Scotland and, on arriving there, raised recruits mainly from amongst his own clan, the Campbells. The rebellion was quickly crushed, and Argyll himself was captured at Inchinnan on 18 June 1685. Having arrived with fewer than 300 men and unable to convince many more to flock to his standard, Argyll never posed a credible threat to James. Argyll was taken as a prisoner to Edinburgh. A new trial was not commenced because Argyll had previously been tried and sentenced to death. The King confirmed the earlier death sentence and ordered that it be carried out within three days of receiving the confirmation.

Monmouth's rebellion was coordinated with Argyll's, but the former was more dangerous to James. Monmouth had proclaimed himself King at Lyme Regis on 11 June. He attempted to raise recruits but was unable to gather enough rebels to defeat even James's small standing army. Monmouth's rebellion attacked the King's forces at night, in an attempt at surprise, but was defeated at the Battle of Sedgemoor. The King's forces, led by Feversham and Churchill, quickly dispersed the ill-prepared rebels. Monmouth himself was captured and executed at the Tower of London on 15 July. The King's judges—most notably, George Jeffreys—condemned many of the rebels to transportation and indentured servitude in the West Indies in a series of trials that came to be known as the Bloody Assizes. Some 250 of the rebels were executed.

Absolutism and religious liberty

To protect himself from further rebellions, James sought safety in an enlarged standing army. This alarmed his subjects, not only because of the trouble soldiers caused in the towns, but because it was against the English tradition to keep a professional army in peacetime. Even more alarming to Parliament was James's use of his dispensing power to allow Roman Catholics to command several regiments without having to take the oath mandated by the Test Act. When even the previously supportive Parliament objected to these measures, James ordered Parliament prorogued in November 1685, never to meet again in his reign. In the beginning of 1686 two papers were found in Charles II's strong box and his closet, in his own hand, stating the arguments for Catholicism over Protestantism. James published these papers with a declaration signed by his sign manual and challenged the Archbishop of Canterbury and the whole Anglican episcopal bench to refute Charles's arguments: "Let me have a solid answer, and in a gentlemanlike style; and it may have the effect which you so much desire of bringing me over to your church". The Archbishop refused on the grounds of respect for the late king. James advocated repeal of the penal laws in all three of his kingdoms, but refused to allow those dissenters who did not petition for relief to receive it. In his own words, James expressed indignation that men had the impudence to advocate repeal of the penal laws against Protestants. James sent a letter to the Scottish Parliament at its opening in 1685, declaring his wish for new penal laws against refractory Presbyterians and lamented that he was not there in person to promote such a law. In response, the Parliament passed an Act which stated that "whoever should preach in a conventicle under a roof, or should attend, either as preacher or as a hearer, a conventicle in the open air, should be punished with death and confiscation of property". In March 1686, James sent a letter to the Scottish Privy Council advocating toleration for Catholics but that the persecution of the Presbyterian Covenanters should continue, calling them to London when they refused to acquiesce his wishes. The Privy Councillors explained that they would grant relief to Catholics only if a similar relief was provided for the Covenanters and if James promised not to attempt anything which would harm the Protestant religion. James agreed to a degree of relief to Presbyterians but not to the full toleration he wanted for Catholics, declaring that the Protestant religion was false and he would not promise not to prejudice a false religion.

James allowed Roman Catholics to occupy the highest offices of the Kingdoms, and received at his court the papal nuncio, Ferdinando d'Adda, the first representative from Rome to London since the reign of Mary I. James's Jesuit confessor, Edward Petre, was a particular object of Protestant ire. When the King's Secretary of State, the Earl of Sunderland, began replacing office-holders at court with Catholic favourites, James began to lose the confidence of many of his Anglican supporters. Sunderland's purge of office-holders even extended to the King's Anglican brothers-in-law and their supporters. Catholics made up no more than one fiftieth of the English population. In May 1686, James sought to obtain from the English common-law courts a ruling which showed that his power to dispense with Acts of Parliament was legal. He dismissed judges who disagreed with him on this matter as well as the Solicitor General Heneage Finch. The case, ''Godden v. Hales,'' affirmed his dispensing power, with eleven out of the twelve judges in ''Godden'' ruling in favour of the dispensing power.

In 1687, James issued the Declaration of Indulgence, also known as the Declaration for Liberty of Conscience, in which he used his dispensing power to negate the effect of laws punishing Catholics and Protestant Dissenters. He attempted to garner support for his tolerationist policy by giving a speaking tour in the West of England in the summer of 1687. As part of this tour, he gave a speech at Chester where he said "suppose... there should be a law made that all black men should be imprisoned, it would be unreasonable and we had as little reason to quarrel with other men for being of different [religious] opinions as for being of different complexions." At the same time, James provided partial toleration in Scotland, using his dispensing power to grant relief to Catholics and partial relief to Presbyterians.

In 1688, James ordered the Declaration read from the pulpits of every Anglican church, further alienating the Anglican bishops against the Catholic governor of their church. While the Declaration elicited some thanks from Catholics and dissenters, it left the Established Church, the traditional ally of the monarchy, in the difficult position of being forced to erode its own privileges. James provoked further opposition by attempting to reduce the Anglican monopoly on education. At the University of Oxford, James offended Anglicans by allowing Catholics to hold important positions in Christ Church and University College, two of Oxford's largest colleges. He also attempted to force the Protestant Fellows of Magdalen College to elect Anthony Farmer, a man of generally ill repute who was believed to be secretly Catholic, as their president when the Protestant incumbent died, a violation of the Fellows' right to elect a candidate of their own choosing.

In 1687 James prepared to pack Parliament with his supporters so that it would repeal the Test Act and the penal laws. James was convinced by addresses from Dissenters that he had their support and so could dispense with relying on Tories and Anglicans. James instituted a wholesale purge of those in offices under the crown opposed to James's plan, appointing new lords-lieutenant and remodeling the corporations governing towns and livery companies. In October James gave orders for the lords-lieutenant in the provinces to provide three standard questions to all members of the Commission of the Peace: would they consent to the repeal of the Test Act and the penal laws; would they assist candidates who would do so; and would they accept the Declaration of Indulgence. During the first three months of 1688, hundreds of those asked the three questions who gave hostile replies were dismissed. Corporations were purged by agents given wide discretionary powers in an attempt to create a permanent royal electoral machine. Finally, on 24 August 1688, James ordered writs to be issued for a general election. However, upon realising in October that William of Orange was going to land in England, James withdrew the writs and wrote to the lords-lieutenant to inquire over allegations of abuses committed during the regulations and election preparations as part of the concessions James made in order to win support.

Glorious Revolution

In April 1688, James re-issued the Declaration of Indulgence, subsequently ordering Anglican clergymen to read it in their churches. When seven Bishops, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, submitted a petition requesting the reconsideration of the King's religious policies, they were arrested and tried for seditious libel. Public alarm increased when Queen Mary gave birth to a Catholic son and heir, James Francis Edward on 10 June of that year. When James's only possible successors were his two Protestant daughters, Anglicans could see his pro-Catholic policies as a temporary phenomenon, but when the Prince's birth opened the possibility of a permanent Catholic dynasty, such men had to reconsider their position. Threatened by a Catholic dynasty, several influential Protestants claimed the child was "supposititious" and had been smuggled into the Queen's bedchamber in a warming pan. They had already entered into negotiations with William, Prince of Orange, when it became known the Queen was pregnant, and the birth of James's son reinforced their convictions.

On 30 June 1688, a group of seven Protestant nobles invited the Prince of Orange to come to England with an army. By September, it had become clear that William sought to invade. Believing that his own army would be adequate, James refused the assistance of Louis XIV, fearing that the English would oppose French intervention. When William arrived on 5 November 1688, many Protestant officers, including Churchill, defected and joined William, as did James's own daughter, Princess Anne. James lost his nerve and declined to attack the invading army, despite his army's numerical superiority. On 11 December, James tried to flee to France, first throwing the Great Seal of the Realm into the River Thames. James was captured in Kent; later, he was released and placed under Dutch protective guard. Having no desire to make James a martyr, the Prince of Orange let him escape on 23 December. James was received by his cousin and ally, Louis XIV, who offered him a palace and a pension. William convened a Convention Parliament to decide how to handle James's flight. While the Parliament refused to depose him, they declared that James, having fled to France and dropped the Great Seal into the Thames, had effectively abdicated the throne, and that the throne had thereby become vacant. To fill this vacancy, James's daughter Mary was declared Queen; she was to rule jointly with her husband William, who would be King. The Parliament of Scotland on 11 April 1689, declared James to have forfeited the throne. The English Parliament passed a Bill of Rights that denounced James for abusing his power. The abuses charged to James included the suspension of the Test Acts, the prosecution of the Seven Bishops for merely petitioning the crown, the establishment of a standing army, and the imposition of cruel punishments. The Bill also declared that henceforth, no Catholic would be permitted to ascend to the English throne, nor could any English monarch marry a Catholic.

Later years

War in Ireland

With the assistance of French troops, James landed in Ireland in March 1689. The Irish Parliament did not follow the example of the English Parliament; it declared that James remained King and passed a massive bill of attainder against those who had rebelled against him. At James's urging, the Irish Parliament passed an Act for Liberty of Conscience that granted religious freedom to all Catholics and Protestants in Ireland. James worked to build an army in Ireland, but was ultimately defeated at the Battle of the Boyne on 1 July 1690 when William arrived, personally leading an army to defeat James and reassert English control. James fled to France once more, departing from Kinsale, never to return to any of his former kingdoms. Because he deserted his Irish supporters, James became known in Ireland as ''Séamus an Chaca'' or 'James the be-shitten'.

Return to exile and death

In France, James was allowed to live in the royal château of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. James's wife and some of his supporters fled with him, including the Earl of Melfort; most, but not all, were Catholic. In 1692, James's last child, Louisa Maria Teresa, was born. Some supporters in England attempted to restore James to the throne by assassinating William III in 1696, but the plot failed and the backlash made James's cause less popular. Louis XIV's offer to have James elected King of Poland in the same year was rejected, for James feared that acceptance of the Polish crown might (in the minds of the English people) render him incapable of being King of England. After Louis concluded peace with William in 1697, he ceased to offer much in the way of assistance to James.

During his last years, James lived as an austere penitent. He wrote a memorandum for his son advising him on how to govern England, specifying that Catholics should possess one Secretary of State, one Commissioner of the Treasury, the Secretary at War, with the majority of the officers in the army.

He died of a brain hemorrhage on 16 September 1701 at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. His body was laid to rest in a coffin at the Chapel of Saint Edmund in the Church of the English Benedictines in the Rue St. Jacques in Paris, with a funeral oration by Henri-Emmanuel de Roquette. In 1734, the Archbishop of Paris heard evidence to support James's canonization, but nothing came of it. During the French Revolution, James's tomb was raided and his remains scattered.

Succession

James's younger daughter Anne succeeded to the throne when William III died in 1702. The Act of Settlement provided that, if the line of succession established in the Bill of Rights were to be extinguished, then the crown would go to a German cousin, Sophia, Electress of Hanover, and to her Protestant heirs. Sophia was a granddaughter of James VI and I through his eldest daughter, Elizabeth Stuart, the sister of King Charles I. Thus, when Anne died in 1714 (fewer than two months after the death of Sophia), the crown was inherited by George I, Sophia's son, the Elector of Hanover and Anne's second cousin.

James's son James Francis Edward was recognised as King at his father's death by Louis XIV of France and James's remaining supporters (later known as Jacobites) as "James III and VIII." He led a rising in Scotland in 1715 shortly after George I's accession, but was defeated. Jacobites rose again in 1745 led by Charles Edward Stuart, James II's grandson, and were again defeated. Since then, no serious attempt to restore the Stuart heir has been made. Charles's claims passed to his younger brother Henry Benedict Stuart, the Dean of the College of Cardinals of the Catholic Church. Henry was the last of James II's legitimate descendants, and no relative has publicly acknowledged the Jacobite claim since then.

Historiography

Historical analysis of James II has gone through considerable change since he was overthrown. Initially, Whig historians, led by Lord Macaulay, cast James as a cruel absolutist and his reign as "tyranny which approached to insanity". Subsequent scholars, such as G. M. Trevelyan (Macaulay's great nephew) and David Ogg, while more balanced than Macaulay, continued Macaulay's tradition into the twentieth century, characterizing James as a tyrant, his attempts at religious tolerance as a fraud, and his reign as an aberration in the course of British history. In 1892, A. W. Ward wrote for the Dictionary of National Biography that James was "obviously a political and religious bigot", although never devoid of "a vein of patriotic sentiment"; "his conversion to the church of Rome made the emancipation of his fellow-catholics in the first instance, and the recovery of England for catholicism in the second, the governing objects of his policy."

Hilaire Belloc broke with this tradition in 1928. Belloc cast James as an honorable man and a true advocate for freedom of conscience, and his enemies as "men in the small clique of great fortunes ... which destroyed the ancient monarchy of the English." Belloc's thesis failed to alter the course of historical opinion at the time, but by the 1960s and 1970s, Maurice Ashley and Stuart Prall began to reconsider James's motives in granting religious toleration, while still taking note of James's autocratic rule. These modern authors moved away from the school of thought that preached inevitability of the Glorious Revolution and the continuous march of progress and democracy. "[H]istory is," Ashley wrote, "after all, the story of human beings and individuals, as well as of the classes and the masses." He cast James II and William III as "men of ideals as well as human weaknesses." John Miller, writing in 2000, accepted the claims of James's absolutism, but argued that "his main concern was to secure religious liberty and civil equality for Catholics. Any 'absolutist' methods ... were essentially means to that end." In 2004, W. A. Speck wrote in the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography that "James was genuinely committed to religious toleration, but also sought to increase the power of the crown." He added that, unlike the government of the Netherlands, "James was too autocratic to combine freedom of conscience with popular government. He resisted any check on the monarch's power. That is why his heart was not in the concessions he had to make in 1688. He would rather live in exile with his principles intact than continue to reign as a limited monarch."

Tim Harris's conclusions from his 2006 book summarize the crossroads of modern scholarship on James II:

Titles and styles

Name	King James II of England
Dipstyle	His Majesty
Offstyle	Your Majesty
Altstyle	Sire }}

Name	James VII, King of Scotland
Dipstyle	His Grace
Offstyle	Your Grace
Altstyle	Sire }}

14 October 1633 – 6 February 1685: Prince James

27 January 1644 – 6 February 1685: The Duke of York

10 May 1659 – 6 February 1685: The Earl of Ulster

31 December 1660 – 6 February 1685: The Duke of Albany

:*''before 1 January 1665 – 6 February 1685: His Royal Highness''

6 February 1685 – 11 December 1688: ''His Majesty'' The King

11 December 1688 – 16 September 1701: ''His Majesty'' King James II

*''Jacobite'': ''His Majesty'' The King

The official style of James in England was "James the Second, by the Grace of God, King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc." (The claim to France was only nominal, and was asserted by every English King from Edward III to George III, regardless of the amount of French territory actually controlled.) In Scotland, he was ''James the Seventh, by the Grace of God, King of Scotland, England, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc.''.

James was created "Duke of Normandy" by King Louis XIV of France, 31 December 1660. This was a few months after the restoration of his brother Charles II to the English and Irish thrones (Charles II had been crowned King of Scotland in 1651), and probably was done as a political gesture of support for James – since his brother also would have claimed the title "Duke of Normandy".

Arms

Prior to his accession, James's arms were those of the kingdom (which he later inherited), differenced by a ''label argent of three points ermine'', although it is noted that, when it become clear that his position as heir-presumptive was not under threat, a ''label argent of three points'' was sometimes used. His arms as King were: ''Quarterly, I and IV Grandquarterly, Azure three fleurs-de-lis Or (for France) and Gules three lions passant guardant in pale Or (for England); II Or a lion rampant within a tressure flory-counter-flory Gules (for Scotland); III Azure a harp Or stringed Argent (for Ireland)''.

{{Image gallery|width=200|height=200 |Coat of Arms of England (1660-1689).svg|See adjacent text|Coat of arms of James II of England |Coat of Arms of Scotland (1660-1689).svg|See adjacent text|Coat of arms of James VII in Scotland }}

In popular culture

James is a character in the novel ''The Man Who Laughs'' by Victor Hugo. He was portrayed by Josef Moser in the 1921 Austrian silent film ''Das Grinsende Gesicht'' and by Sam De Grasse in the 1928 silent film ''The Man Who Laughs''.

He has also been portrayed by Gibb McLaughlin in the 1926 silent film ''Nell Gwynne'', based on a novel by Joseph Shearing, Lawrence Anderson in the 1934 film ''Nell Gwyn'', Vernon Steele in the 1935 film ''Captain Blood'', based on the novel by Rafael Sabatini, Douglas Matthews in the 1938 BBC TV drama ''Thank You, Mr. Pepys'', Henry Oscar in the 1948 film ''Bonnie Prince Charlie'', John Westbrook in the 1969 BBC TV series ''The First Churchills'', Guy Henry in the 1995 film ''England, My England'', the story of the composer Henry Purcell, and Charlie Creed-Miles in the 2003 BBC TV miniseries ''Charles II: The Power & the Passion''.

Ancestors

{{ahnentafel-compact5 |style=font-size: 90%; line-height: 110%; background-color: transparent; margin:auto; |border=1 |boxstyle=padding-top: 0; padding-bottom: 0; |boxstyle_1=background-color: #fcc; |boxstyle_2=background-color: #fb9; |boxstyle_3=background-color: #ffc; |boxstyle_4=background-color: #bfc; |boxstyle_5=background-color: #9fe; |1= 1. James II of England |2= 2. Charles I of England |3= 3. Henrietta Maria of France |4= 4. James I of England |5= 5. Anne of Denmark |6= 6. Henry IV of France |7= 7. Marie de' Medici |8= 8. Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley |9= 9. Mary, Queen of Scots |10= 10. Frederick II of Denmark |11= 11. Sofie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin |12= 12. Antoine of Navarre |13= 13. Jeanne III of Navarre |14= 14. Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany |15= 15. Johanna of Austria |16= 16. Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox |17= 17. Margaret Douglas |18= 18. James V of Scotland |19= 19. Mary of Guise |20= 20. Christian III of Denmark |21= 21. Dorothea of Saxe-Lauenburg |22= 22. Ulrich III of Mecklenburg-Schwerin |23= 23. Elizabeth of Denmark |24= 24. Charles de Bourbon, Duke of Vendôme |25= 25. Francoise d'Alencon |26= 26. Henry II of Navarre |27= 27. Marguerite de Navarre |28= 28. Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany |29= 29. Eleonora di Toledo |30= 30. Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor |31= 31. Anna of Bohemia and Hungary }}

Issue

|- |Isabel||28 August 1676||2 March 1681||  |- |Charles, Duke of Cambridge||7 November 1677||12 December 1677|| died of smallpox |- |Elizabeth||1678||c. 1678||  |- |Charlotte Maria||16 August 1682||16 October 1682|| died of convulsions |- |James, Prince of Wales ''Old Pretender''||10 June 1688||1 January 1766||married 1719, Mary Sobieski; had issue |- |Louisa Maria Teresa||28 June 1692||20 April 1712||  |- |colspan=4|''By Arabella Churchill '' |- |Henrietta FitzJames ||1667||3 April 1730||Married first Henry Waldegrave; had issue. Married secondly Piers Butler, 3rd Viscount Galmoye; no issue. |- |James FitzJames, 1st Duke of Berwick ||21 August 1670||12 June 1734|| |- |Henry FitzJames, 1st Duke of Albemarle||August, 1673||December, 1702|| |- |Arabella FitzJames||1674||7 November 1704||Became a nun. |- |colspan=4|''By Catherine Sedley'' |- |Catherine Darnley||c. 1681||13 March 1743||Alleged daughter. Married firstly, James Annesley, 3rd Earl of Anglesey and had issue, married secondly, John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normanby and had issue. |- |James Darnley|| 1684 || 1685 || |}

See also

Touch Pieces

List of James II deserters to William of Orange

Notes

References

Ashley, Maurice, ''The Glorious Revolution of 1688'', Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1966. ISBN 0-340-00896-2.

Belloc, Hilaire, ''James the Second'', J.B. Lippincott Co, Philadelphia 1928, popular; Catholic perspective

Callow, John, ''The Making of King James II: The Formative Years of a King'', Sutton Publishing, Ltd, Stroud, Gloucestershire, 2000. ISBN 0-7509-2398-9.

Clarke, James S. (Editor), ''The Life of James II'', London, 1816

Dekrey, Gary S. "Between Revolutions: Re-appraising the Restoration in Britain," ''History Compass'' 2008 6(3): 738–773,

Devine, T. M., ''The Scottish Nation 1700–2007'', Penguin Books, London, 2006. ISBN 0-14-102769-X

Glassey, Lionel, ed. ''The Reigns of Charles II and James VII and II'' (1997)

Goodlad, Graham. " Before the Glorious Revolution: The Making of Absolute Monarchy?," ''History Review''. Issue: 58; 2007. pp 10+. Examines the Controversies Surrounding the Development of Royal Power under Charles II and James II. in Questia

Hallam, Henry, ''The Constitutional History of England from the Accession of Henry VII to the Death of George II,'' W. Clowes & Sons, London, 1855.

Harris, Tim, ''Revolution: The Great Crisis of the British Monarchy, 1685–1720'', Penguin Books, Ltd., 2006. ISBN 0-7139-9759-1.

"James II," ''Encyclopædia Britannica,'' 11th ed. London, 1911: Cambridge University Press.

Jones, J. R. ''The Revolution of 1688 in England'', Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988. ISBN 0-297-99467-0.

Kenyon, J.P., ''The Stuart Constitution 1603–1688, Documents and Commentary'', 2d ed., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1986. ISBN 0-521-31327-9.

MacLeod, John, ''Dynasty, the Stuarts, 1560–1807'', Hodder and Stoughton, London 1999. ISBN 0-340-70767-4.

Macaulay, Thomas Babington, ''The History of England from the Accession of James the Second. Popular Edition in Two Volumes''. Longmans, London 1889.

Miller, John. ''James II'' (3rd ed. 2000) ISBN 0-300-08728-4, Miller sees James as more interested in his own survival and tolerance for Catholics and suggests he did not have a grand plan to Catholicize England

Miller, John. ''The Stuarts'' (2004), 320pp; standard scholarly survey

Miller, John. ''The Glorious Revolution'', (2nd ed. 1997) ISBN 0-582-29222-0

McFerran, Noel S. (2003). "James II and VII."

Mullett, M. ''James II and English Politics 1678–1688'' (1993) ISBN 0-415-09042-3

Pincus, Steve. ''1688: The First Modern Revolution'' (2009) ISBN 0-300-11547-4, influential new interpretation

Prall, Stuart, ''The Bloodless Revolution: England, 1688'', Anchor Books, Garden City, New York 1972.

Royle, Trevor, ''The British Civil Wars: The Wars of the Three Kingdoms, 1638–1660'', Little, Brown, 2004. ISBN 0-312-29293-7.

Sowerby, Scott, "Of Different Complexions: Religious Diversity and National Identity in James II's Toleration Campaign," ''English Historical Review,'' vol. 124 (2009), pp. 29–52.

Speck, W.A. ''James II'' (2002), argues James did not seek to impose Catholicism, but his ambitions went far beyond equal treatment for Catholics.

Turner, Francis C., ''James II'', Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, 1948

Waller, Maureen, ''Ungrateful Daughters: The Stuart Princesses who Stole Their Father's Crown'', Hodder & Stoughton, London, 2002. ISBN 0-312-30711-X.

External links

King James II on Find-A-Grave

Category:1633 births Category:1701 deaths James II & VII Category:Converts to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism Category:Deaths from cerebral hemorrhage York Albany 601 501 Ulster Category:Earls of Ulster Category:English monarchs Category:English people of French descent Category:English people of Scottish descent Category:English Roman Catholics Category:Fellows of the Royal Society Category:Glorious Revolution Category:Governors of the Hudson's Bay Company Category:History of Roman Catholicism in Great Britain Category:House of Stuart Category:Jacobite military personnel of the Williamite War in Ireland Category:Knights of the Garter Category:Lord High Admirals Category:Lords Warden of the Cinque Ports Category:New York colonial people Category:Pre-state history of New York Category:Pretenders to the throne of the kingdom of France (Plantagenet) Category:Princes of England Category:Princes of Scotland Category:Roman Catholic monarchs Category:Scottish monarchs Category:Lords High Commissioner to the Parliament of Scotland

af:Jakobus II van Engeland ar:جيمس الثاني ملك إنجلترا an:Chaime II d'Anglaterra bs:Jakov II, kralj Engleske br:Jakez II (Bro-Saoz) bg:Джеймс II (Англия) ca:Jaume II d'Anglaterra i VII d'Escòcia cs:Jakub II. Stuart cy:Iago II & VII, brenin Lloegr a'r Alban da:Jakob 2. af England de:Jakob II. (England) et:James II (Inglismaa kuningas) el:Ιάκωβος Β' της Αγγλίας es:Jacobo II de Inglaterra eo:Jakobo la 2-a (Anglio) eu:Jakue II.a Ingalaterrakoa eta VII. Eskoziakoa fa:جیمز دوم انگلستان fr:Jacques II d'Angleterre ga:Séamas II Shasana gd:Rìgh Seumas VII Alba is II Shasainn ko:제임스 2세 (잉글랜드) hr:Jakov II., kralj Engleske id:James II dari Inggris it:Giacomo II d'Inghilterra he:ג'יימס השני, מלך אנגליה ka:ჯეიმზ II (ინგლისი) kw:Jamys VII ha II la:Iacobus II (rex Angliae) lv:Džeimss II Stjuarts lt:Jokūbas II hu:II. Jakab angol király arz:جيمس التانى ملك إنجلترا ms:James II dari England nl:Jacobus II van Engeland ja:ジェームズ2世 (イングランド王) no:Jakob II av England nn:Jakob II av England pl:Jakub II Stuart pt:Jaime II de Inglaterra ro:Iacob al II-lea al Angliei ru:Яков II (король Англии) sco:James VII, Keeng o Scots simple:James II of England sk:Jakub II. (Anglicko) sr:Џејмс II Стјуарт sh:James II od Engleske fi:Jaakko II (Englanti) sv:Jakob II av England th:สมเด็จพระเจ้าเจมส์ที่ 2 แห่งอังกฤษ tr:II. James (İngiltere) uk:Яків II (король Англії) vi:James II của Anh zh:詹姆斯二世 (英格蘭)

Henry Lawes (December 5, 1595 – October 21, 1662) was an English musician and composer.

He was born at Dinton in Wiltshire, and received his musical education from John Cooper, better known under his Italian pseudonym Giovanni Coperario, a famous composer of the day. In 1626, Lawes was received as one of the gentlemen of the chapel royal, and held the position until the Commonwealth put a stop to church music. Nevertheless Lawes continued his work as a composer, and the famous collection of his vocal pieces, ''Ayres and Dialogues for One, Two and Three Voyces'', was published in 1653 and followed by two other books under the same title in 1655 and 1658 respectively. On the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Lawes returned to the royal chapel, and composed an anthem for the coronation of King Charles II. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Lawes's name has become known beyond musical circles because of his friendship with John Milton, for whose masque, ''Comus'', he supplied the incidental music for the first performance in 1634. The poet in return immortalized his friend in a famous sonnet in which Milton, with a musical perception not common amongst poets, describes the great merit of Lawes. His careful attention to the words of the poet, the manner in which his music seems to grow from those words, the perfect coincidence of the musical with the metrical accent, cause Lawes's songs to be regarded by some as on a level with those of Robert Schumann or Franz Liszt. At the same time he is not lacking in genuine melodic invention, and his concerted music shows skilled use of counterpoint.

Henry Lawes was the brother of William Lawes, also a composer.

References

External links

Category:1595 births Category:1662 deaths Category:Baroque composers Category:English composers Category:Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal

de:Henry Lawes es:Henry Lawes it:Henry Lawes ja:ヘンリー・ローズ no:Henry Lawes nn:Henry Lawes sv:Henry Lawes

Coordinates	45°30′″N73°40′″N
name	William Child
background	non_vocal_instrumentalist
born	1606
died	March 23, 1697
instrument	Organ
genre	church music
notable instruments	}}

William Child (1606 – March 23, 1697) was an English composer and organist.

Born in Bristol, William Child was a chorister in the cathedral under the direction of Elway Bevin. In 1630 he began his lifetime association with St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, becoming first a lay-clerk and, from 1632, Master of the Choristers there until the dissolution of the chapel in 1643. After the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, Child was re-appointed to St. George's, became Master of the King's Wind Music and a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal.

His output of church music is understandably considerable, including a set of psalms (1639), many anthems and 17 service settings. He was often influenced by the Italian 'tastes' of his time, but also wrote anthems in more conventional English forms.

Little secular music of William Child survives, namely, a number of catches and instrumental pieces.

{{s-ttl|title=First Organist of the Chapel Royal |years=1660-1697}}

Sources

Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, Centennial Edition. Nicolas Slonimsky, Editor Emeritus. Schirmer, 2001.

External links

Category:1606 births Category:1697 deaths Category:English composers Category:Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal Category:People from Bristol

Coordinates	45°30′″N73°40′″N
name	Bizzy Bone
background	solo_singer
born	September 12, 1976Columbus, Ohio, United States
birth name	Bryon Anthony McCane II
alias	Ripsta, B.B Gambini, Gambino, Bizzy The Kid
origin	Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.
genre	Hip hop
years active	1989–present
label	Ruthless (1994-2002)BTNH Worldwide (2009)Mo Thugs (1996-1998)Virgin Records (2007)Bungalo (2003-2004)SMC (2005)Real Talk (2006)After Platinum Records (2006)Warner Bros (2009-2010)
associated acts	Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, Bone Brothers }}

Bryon Anthony McCane II (born September 12, 1976), better known by his stage name Bizzy Bone, is an American rapper and a member of the Cleveland rap group Bone Thugs-n-Harmony.

Early life

At the age of 5, Bryon and his two sisters were abducted by his stepfather. Both his sisters were natural children of Bryon's stepfather. He lived in many homes, apartments, cars and motels and was unaware at first that he had been abducted. He was told his mother had died. In 1983, he was living at a reservation in Oklahoma where his stepfather had dropped him off. A neighbor saw his photo at the end of the made-for-TV movie, ''Adam'' and called the police, resulting in his return to his family.

Thereafter, his childhood remained difficult. His mother remarried and Bryon's new stepfather physically abused him and his mother. Eventually, his mother divorced and put him and his sisters in a foster home until she could get her life back together.

When he was thirteen, Bryon decided he wanted to live with his sisters and their father in Cleveland, Ohio. During this period he met Layzie Bone, Krayzie Bone, Wish Bone and Flesh-n-Bone. In 2002, he appeared on the FOX series ''America's Most Wanted'' (hosted by John Walsh, Adam's father) and he revealed his abusive childhood and molestation. Bryon also wrote and performed a song on the show entitled "A.M.W." in which he thanks Walsh and encourages abused children to come forward.

Solo career

Bizzy Bone started his solo career in 1998. He is best known for his style, combining rapid fire raps and double harmony choruses. His solo debut, ''Heaven'z Movie,'' was critically acclaimed and certified Gold by the RIAA.

''The Gift'', released on April 7, 2001, peaked at #2 on the US Billboard Independent Albums chart.

In 2002 at a Bone Thugs-n-Harmony performance in New York City, Bizzy was noticeably drunk and walked off-stage halfway through the show and was let go from the group

In 2004, Bizzy released ''Alpha and Omega'' and fans responded positively to the album. Bizzy followed up with the limited-edition internet album "The Beginning and the End."

On May 2, 2005, Bizzy Bone made news when he displayed unusual behavior during an appearance on Houston's KPFT radio show, "Damage Control". He was asked about KPFT during an MTV interview and commented, "Everybody thought I went crazy, they were questioning my motives and what was going on." He also stated he felt he was being antagonized during the interview and went into defense mode. He later admitted to having a drinking problem and that his family had attempted to have him committed to a mental health facility.

On June 16, 2011 it was reported that Bizzy Bone assaulted two Bone Thugs-n-Harmony fans the previous night and gave one a broken nose.

Discography

''Bizzy Bone discography''

In other media

The song "Jesus" was featured in the movie ''Bully''. The song "Hollywood" was featured in the video game ''True Crime: Streets of LA''. The song "Fried Day" was featured in the movie "Next Friday" Bizzy Bone appeared in a "Web Redemption" segment of the Average Homeboy on the Comedy Central TV show, Tosh.0. He was also featured on track nine of I See Stars' 2009 album, 3-D.

Filmography # Cutthroat Alley (2003) .... Ghetty # Jacked Up (2001) .... Zach

References

External links

Category:1976 births Category:Living people Category:Bone Thugs-n-Harmony members Category:People from Cleveland, Ohio Category:Hip hop singers Category:African American rappers

da:Bizzy Bone de:Bizzy Bone es:Bizzy Bone fr:Bizzy Bone it:Bizzy Bone nl:Bizzy Bone no:Bizzy Bone pl:Bizzy Bone fi:Bizzy Bone sv:Bizzy Bone

Coordinates	45°30′″N73°40′″N
Name	Jesse James
Birth name	Jesse Woodson James
Birth date	September 05, 1847
Birth place	Kearney, Missouri, U.S.
Death date	April 03, 1882
Death place	St. Joseph, Missouri, U.S.
Known for	Robbery
Nationality	American
Spouse	Zerelda Mimms
Children	Jesse E. James, Mary James Barr
Parents	Robert S. James, Zerelda Cole James }}

Jesse Woodson James (September 5, 1847 April 3, 1882) was an American outlaw, gang leader, bank robber, train robber, and murderer from the state of Missouri and the most famous member of the James-Younger Gang. Already a celebrity when he was alive, he became a legendary figure of the Wild West after his death. Some recent scholars place him in the context of regional insurgencies of ex-Confederates following the American Civil War rather than a manifestation of frontier lawlessness or alleged economic justice.

Jesse and his brother Frank James were Confederate guerrillas during the Civil War. They were accused of participating in atrocities committed against Union soldiers. After the war, as members of one gang or another, they robbed banks, stagecoaches, and trains. Despite popular portrayals of James as a kind of Robin Hood, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor, there is no evidence that he and his gang used their robbery gains for anyone but themselves.

The James brothers were most active with their gang from about 1866 until 1876, when their attempted robbery of a bank in Northfield, Minnesota, resulted in the capture or deaths of several members. They continued in crime for several years, recruiting new members, but were under increasing pressure from law enforcement. On April 3, 1882, Jesse James was killed by Robert Ford, who was a member of the gang living in the James house and who was hoping to collect a state reward on James' head.

Early life

Jesse Woodson James was born in Clay County, Missouri, near the site of present day Kearney, on September 5, 1847. Jesse James had two full siblings: his older brother, Alexander Franklin "Frank", and a younger sister, Susan Lavenia James. Across a creek and up a hill from the house on the right was the home of Daniel Askew, where Askew was killed on April 12, 1875. Askew was suspected of cooperating with the Pinkertons in the January 1875 arson of the house (in a room on the left). James's original grave was on the property but he was later moved to a cemetery in Kearney. The original footstone is still outside, although the family has replaced the headstone.

His father, Robert S. James was a commercial hemp farmer and Baptist minister in Kentucky, who migrated to Bradford, Missouri after marriage and helped found William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri. He was prosperous, acquiring six slaves and more than of farmland. Robert James travelled to California during the Gold Rush to minister to those searching for gold and died there when Jesse was three years old.

After the death of Robert James, his widow Zerelda remarried twice, first to Benjamin Simms and then in 1855 to Dr. Reuben Samuel, who moved into the James' home. Jesse's mother and Reuben Samuel had four children together: Sarah Louisa, John Thomas, Fannie Quantrell, and Archie Peyton Samuel. Zerelda and Reuben Samuel acquired a total of seven slaves, who served mainly as farmhands in tobacco cultivation in Missouri.

Historical context

The approach of the American Civil War overshadowed the James-Samuel household. Missouri was a border state, sharing characteristics of both North and South, but 75% of the population was from the South or other border states. Clay County was in a region of Missouri later dubbed "Little Dixie," as it was a center of migration from the Upper South. Farmers raised the same crops and livestock as in the areas they migrated from. They brought slaves with them and purchased more according to need. The county had more slaveholders, who held more slaves, than in other regions. Aside from slavery, the culture of Little Dixie was Southern in other ways as well. This influenced how the population acted during and for a period of time after the American Civil War. In Missouri as a whole, slaves accounted for only 10 percent of the population, but in Clay County they constituted 25 percent.

After the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, Clay County became the scene of great turmoil, as the question of whether slavery would be expanded into the neighboring Kansas Territory came to dominate public life. Numerous people from Missouri migrated to Kansas to try to influence its future. Much of the tension that led up to the Civil War centered on the violence that erupted in Kansas between pro- and anti-slavery militias.

American Civil War

The Civil War may have shaped the life of Jesse James. After a series of campaigns and battles between conventional armies in 1861, guerrilla warfare gripped the state, waged between secessionist "bushwhackers" and Union forces which largely consisted of local militia organizations ("jayhawkers"). A bitter conflict ensued, bringing an escalating cycle of atrocities by both sides. Guerrillas murdered civilian Unionists, executed prisoners and scalped the dead. Union forces enforced martial law with raids on homes, arrests of civilians, summary executions and banishment of Confederate sympathizers from the state.

The James-Samuel family took the Confederate side at the outset of the war. Frank James joined a local company recruited for the secessionist Drew Lobbs Army, and fought at the Battle of Wilson's Creek, though he fell ill and returned home soon afterward. In 1863, he was identified as a member of a guerrilla squad that operated in Clay County. In May of that year, a Union militia company raided the James-Samuel farm, looking for Frank's group. They tortured Reuben Samuel by briefly hanging him from a tree. According to legend, they lashed young Jesse.

Quantrill's Raiders

Frank eluded capture and was believed to have joined the guerrilla organization led by William C. Quantrill. It is thought that he took part in the notorious massacre of some 200 men and boys in Lawrence, Kansas, a center of abolitionists.

Frank James followed Quantrill to Texas over the winter of 1863–64. In the spring he returned in a squad commanded by Fletch Taylor. After they arrived in Clay County, 16-year-old Jesse James joined his brother in Taylor's group.

In the summer of 1864, Taylor was severely wounded, losing his right arm to a shotgun blast. The James brothers joined the bushwhacker group led by Bloody Bill Anderson. Jesse suffered a serious wound to the chest that summer. The Clay County provost marshal reported that both Frank and Jesse James took part in the Centralia Massacre in September, in which guerrillas killed or wounded some 22 unarmed Union troops; the guerrillas scalped and dismembered some of the dead. The guerrillas ambushed and defeated a pursuing regiment of Major A.V.E. Johnson's Union troops, killing all who tried to surrender (more than 100). Frank later identified Jesse as a member of the band who had fatally shot Major Johnson. As a result of the James brothers' activities, the Union military authorities made their family leave Clay County. Though ordered to move South beyond Union lines, instead they moved across the nearby state border into Nebraska.

After Anderson was killed in an ambush in October, the James brothers separated. Frank followed Quantrill into Kentucky; Jesse went to Texas under the command of Archie Clement, one of Anderson's lieutenants. He is known to have returned to Missouri in the spring. Jesse was shot while trying to surrender when they ran into a Union cavalry patrol near Lexington, Missouri. Jesse James suffered the second of two life-threatening chest wounds.

After the Civil War

At the end of the Civil War, Missouri was in shambles. The conflict split the population into three bitterly opposed factions: anti-slavery Unionists, identified with the Republican Party; the segregationist conservative Unionists, identified with the Democratic Party; and pro-slavery, ex-Confederate secessionists, many of whom were also allied with the Democrats, especially the southern part of the party. The Republican Reconstruction administration passed a new state constitution that freed Missouri's slaves. It temporarily excluded former Confederates from voting, serving on juries, becoming corporate officers, or preaching from church pulpits. The atmosphere was volatile, with widespread clashes between individuals, and between armed gangs of veterans from both sides of the war.

Jesse recovered from his chest wound at his uncle's Missouri boardinghouse, where he was tended to by his first cousin, Zerelda "Zee" Mimms, named after Jesse's mother. Jesse and his cousin began a nine-year courtship, culminating in marriage. Meanwhile, his old commander Archie Clement kept his bushwhacker gang together and began to harass Republican authorities.

These men were the likely culprits in the first daylight armed bank robbery in the United States during peacetime, the robbery of the Clay County Savings Association in the town of Liberty, Missouri, on February 13, 1866. This bank was owned by Republican former militia officers who had recently conducted the first Republican Party rally in Clay County's history. One innocent bystander, a student of William Jewell College (which James's father had helped to found), was shot dead on the street during the gang's escape. It remains unclear whether Jesse and Frank took part.

After their later robberies took place and they became legends, there were those who credited them with being the leaders of the Clay County robbery. It has been argued in rebuttal that James was at the time still bedridden with his wound. No concrete evidence has surfaced to connect either brother to the crime, or to rule them out. On June 13, 1866 in Jackson County, Missouri two jailed members of Quantril's gang were demanded to be freed by a gang and the Jailor killed it is believed the James Brothers were involved.

This was a time of increasing local violence; Governor Fletcher had recently ordered a company of militia into Johnson County to suppress guerrilla activity. Archie Clement continued his career of crime and harassment of the Republican government, to the extent of occupying the town of Lexington, Missouri, on election day in 1866. Shortly afterward, the state militia shot Clement dead, an event James wrote about with bitterness a decade later.

The survivors of Clement's gang continued to conduct bank robberies over the next two years, though their numbers dwindled through arrests, gunfights, and lynchings. While they later tried to justify robbing the banks, these were small, local banks with local capital, not part of the national system that was an object of popular discontent in the 1860s and 1870s. On May 23, 1867, for example, they robbed a bank in Richmond, Missouri, in which they killed the mayor and two others. It remains uncertain whether either of the James brothers took part, although an eyewitness who knew the brothers told a newspaper seven years later "positively and emphatically that he recognized Jesse and Frank James ... among the robbers." In 1868, Frank and Jesse James allegedly joined Cole Younger in robbing a bank at Russellville, Kentucky.

Jesse James did not become famous, however, until December 7, 1869, when he and (most likely) Frank robbed the Daviess County Savings Association in Gallatin, Missouri. The robbery netted little money, but it appears that Jesse shot and killed the cashier, Captain John Sheets, mistakenly believing him to be Samuel P. Cox, the militia officer who had killed "Bloody Bill" Anderson during the Civil War. James's self-proclaimed attempt at revenge, and the daring escape he and Frank made through the middle of a posse shortly afterward, put his name in the newspapers for the first time. An 1882 history of Daviess County said, "The history of Daviess County has no blacker crime in its pages than the murder of John W. Sheets."

The 1869 robbery marked the emergence of Jesse James as the most famous of the former guerrillas and the first time he was publicly labeled an "outlaw," as Missouri Governor Thomas T. Crittenden set a reward for his capture. This was the beginning of an alliance between James and John Newman Edwards, editor and founder of the ''Kansas City Times''. Edwards, a former Confederate cavalryman, was campaigning to return former secessionists to power in Missouri. Six months after the Gallatin robbery, Edwards published the first of many letters from Jesse James to the republic, asserting his innocence. Over time, the letters gradually became more political in tone, denouncing the Republicans and voicing James' pride in his Confederate loyalties. Together with Edwards's admiring editorials, the letters turned James into a symbol of Confederate defiance of Reconstruction. Jesse James's initiative in creating his rising public profile is debated by historians and biographers, though the tense politics certainly surrounded his outlaw career and enhanced his notoriety.

Meanwhile, the James brothers joined with Cole Younger and his brothers John, Jim, and Bob as well as Clell Miller and other former Confederates to form what came to be known as the James-Younger Gang. With Jesse James as the public face of the gang (though with operational leadership likely shared among the group), the gang carried out a string of robberies from Iowa to Texas, and from Kansas to West Virginia. They robbed banks, stagecoaches, and a fair in Kansas City, often in front of large crowds, even hamming it up for the bystanders.

On July 21, 1873, they turned to train robbery, derailing the Rock Island train in Adair, Iowa and stealing approximately $3,000 ($51,000 in 2007). For this, they wore Ku Klux Klan masks, deliberately taking on a potent symbol years after the Klan had been suppressed in the South by President Grant's use of the Force Acts. Former rebels attacked the railroads as symbols of threatening centralization.

The James' gang's later train robberies had a lighter touch. In only two train hold-ups did they rob passengers, because James typically limited himself to the express safe in the baggage car. Such techniques reinforced the Robin Hood image that Edwards created in his newspapers, but the James gang never shared any of the robbery money outside their circle.

Pinkertons

The Adams Express Company turned to the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in 1874 to stop the James-Younger gang. The Chicago-based agency worked primarily against urban professional criminals, as well as providing industrial security, such as strike breaking. Because the gang received support by many former Confederate soldiers in Missouri, they eluded the Pinkertons. Joseph Whicher, an agent dispatched to infiltrate Zerelda Samuel's farm, shortly afterwards was found killed. Two others, Louis J. Lull and John Boyle, were sent after the Youngers; Lull was killed by two of the Youngers in a roadside gunfight on March 17, 1874. Before he died, Lull fatally shot John Younger. A deputy sheriff named Edwin Daniels was also killed in the skirmish.

Allan Pinkerton, the agency's founder and leader, took on the case as a personal vendetta. He began to work with former Unionists who lived near the James family farm. On the night of January 25, 1875, he staged a raid on the homestead. Detectives threw an incendiary device into the house; it exploded, killing James's young half-brother Archie (named for Archie Clement) and blowing off one of the arms of mother Zerelda Samuel. Afterward, Pinkerton denied that the raid's intent was arson, but biographer Ted Yeatman located a letter by Pinkerton in the Library of Congress in which Pinkerton declared his intention to "burn the house down."

The raid on the family home outraged many, and did more than all of Edwards's columns to create sympathy for Jesse James. The Missouri state legislature only narrowly defeated a bill that praised the James and Younger brothers and offered them amnesty. Allowed to vote and hold office again, former Confederates voted to limit reward offers that the governor could make for fugitives. This extended a measure of protection over the James-Younger gang. (Only Frank and Jesse James previously had been singled out for rewards larger than the new limit.)

Downfall of the gang

Jesse and his cousin Zee married on April 24, 1874, and had two children who survived to adulthood: Jesse Edward James (b. 1875) and Mary Susan James (b. 1879). Twins Gould and Montgomery James (b. 1878) died in infancy. Jesse, Jr. became a lawyer in Kansas City, Missouri and Los Angeles, California.

On September 7, 1876, the James-Younger gang attempted a raid on the First National Bank of Northfield, Minnesota. After this robbery and a manhunt, only Frank and Jesse James were left alive and uncaptured. Cole and Bob Younger later stated that they selected the bank because they believed it was associated with the Republican politician Adelbert Ames, the governor of Mississippi during Reconstruction, and Union general Benjamin Butler, Ames' father-in-law and the Union commander of occupied New Orleans. Ames was a stockholder in the bank, but Butler had no direct connection to it.

To carry out the robbery, the gang divided into two groups. Three men entered the bank, two guarded the door outside, and three remained near a bridge across an adjacent square. The robbers inside the bank were thwarted when acting cashier Joseph Lee Heywood refused to open the safe, falsely claiming that it was secured by a time lock even as they held a bowie knife to his throat and cracked his skull with a pistol butt. Assistant cashier Alonzo Enos Bunker was wounded in the shoulder as he fled out the back door of the bank.

Meanwhile, the citizens of Northfield grew suspicious of the men guarding the door and raised the alarm. The five bandits outside fired in the air to clear the streets, which drove the townspeople to take cover and fire back from protected positions. Two bandits were shot dead and the rest were wounded in the barrage. Inside, the outlaws turned to flee. As they left, one shot the unarmed cashier Heywood in the head. Historians have speculated about the identity of the shooter but have not reached consensus on his identity.

The gang barely escaped Northfield, leaving two dead companions behind. They killed two innocent victims, Heywood, and Nicholas Gustafson, a Swedish immigrant from the Millersburg community west of Northfield. A massive manhunt ensued. It is believed that the gang burned 14 Rice County mills shortly after the robbery. The James brothers eventually split from the others and escaped to Missouri. The militia soon discovered the Youngers and one other bandit, Charlie Pitts. In a gunfight, Pitts died and the Youngers were taken prisoner. Except for Frank and Jesse James, the James-Younger Gang was destroyed.

Later in 1876, Jesse and Frank James surfaced in the Nashville, Tennessee area, where they went by the names of Thomas Howard and B. J. Woodson, respectively. Frank seemed to settle down, but Jesse remained restless. He recruited a new gang in 1879 and returned to crime, holding up a train at Glendale, Missouri (now part of Independence, Missouri), on October 8, 1879. The robbery was the first of a spree of crimes, including the holdup of the federal paymaster of a canal project in Killen, Alabama, and two more train robberies. But the new gang did not consist of battle-hardened guerrillas; they soon turned against each other or were captured, while James grew paranoid, killing one gang member and frightening away another.

By 1881, with authorities growing suspicious, the brothers returned to Missouri where they felt safer. In December, Jesse rented a house in Saint Joseph, Missouri, not far from where he had been born and raised. Frank, however, decided to move to safer territory, heading east to Virginia.

Death

With his gang nearly annihilated, James trusted only the Ford brothers, Charley and Robert. Although Charley had been out on raids with James, Bob was an eager new recruit. For protection, James asked the Ford brothers to move in with him and his family. James had often stayed with their sister Martha Bolton and, according to rumor, he was "smitten" with her. James did not know that Bob Ford had been conducting secret negotiations with Thomas T. Crittenden, the Missouri governor, to bring in the famous outlaw. Crittenden had made capture of the James brothers his top priority; in his inaugural address he declared that no political motives could be allowed to keep them from justice. Barred by law from offering a sufficiently large reward, he had turned to the railroad and express corporations to put up a $5,000 bounty for each of them.

On April 3, 1882, after eating breakfast, the Fords and James prepared to depart for another robbery. They went in and out of the house to ready the horses. As it was an unusually hot day, James removed his coat, then declared that he should remove his firearms as well, lest he look suspicious. Noticing a dusty picture on the wall, he stood on a chair to clean it. Bob Ford shot James in the back of the head. James' two previous bullet wounds and partially missing middle finger served to positively identify the body.

The murder of Jesse James became a national sensation. The Fords made no attempt to hide their role. Indeed, Robert Ford wired the governor to claim his reward. Crowds pressed into the little house in St. Joseph to see the dead bandit, even while the Ford brothers surrendered to the authorities but they were dismayed to find that they were charged with first degree murder. In the course of a single day, the Ford brothers were indicted, pleaded guilty, were sentenced to death by hanging, and two hours later were granted a full pardon by Governor Crittenden.

The governor's quick pardon suggested that he knew the brothers intended to kill James rather than capture him. Like many who knew James, the Ford brothers never believed it was practical to try to take him into custody. The implication that the chief executive of Missouri conspired to kill a private citizen startled the public and added to James' notoriety.

After receiving a small portion of the reward, the Fords fled Missouri. Law enforcement officials active in the plan also shared the bounty. Later the Ford brothers starred in a touring stage show in which they reenacted the shooting.

Suffering from tuberculosis (then incurable) and a morphine addiction, Charley Ford committed suicide on May 6, 1884, in Richmond, Missouri. Bob Ford operated a tent saloon in Creede, Colorado. On June 8, 1892, a man named Edward O'Kelley, went to Creede, loaded a double barrel shotgun, entered Ford's saloon and said "Hello, Bob" before shooting Bob Ford in the throat, killing him instantly. O'Kelley was sentenced to life in prison. O'Kelley's sentence was subsequently commuted because of a 7,000 signature petition in favor of his release. The governor pardoned him on October 3, 1902.

James' mother Zerelda Samuel wrote the following epitaph for him: ''In Loving Memory of my Beloved Son, Murdered by a Traitor and Coward Whose Name is not Worthy to Appear Here.'' James's widow Zee died alone and in poverty.

Rumors of survival

Rumors of Jesse James's survival proliferated almost as soon as the newspapers announced his death. Some said that Robert Ford killed someone other than James, in an elaborate plot to allow him to escape justice. These tales have received little credence, then or later. None of James's biographers has accepted them as plausible. The body buried in Kearney, Missouri, as Jesse James's was exhumed in 1995 and subjected to mitochondrial DNA typing. The report, prepared by Anne C. Stone, Ph.D., James E. Starrs, L.L.M., and Mark Stoneking, Ph.D., stated the mtDNA recovered from the remains was consistent with the mtDNA of one of James's relatives in the female line. This theme resurfaced in a 2009 documentary, ''Jesse James' Hidden Treasure'', which aired on the History Channel. The documentary was dismissed as pseudo-history and pseudo-science by historian Nancy Samuelson in a review she wrote for Winter, 2009-2010 edition of ''The James-Younger Gang Journal''.

One prominent claimant was J. Frank Dalton, who died August 15, 1951, in Granbury, Texas. Dalton was allegedly 101 years old at the time of his first public appearance, in May 1948. His story did not hold up to questioning from James' surviving relatives.

Legacy and controversies

James's turn to crime after the end of Reconstruction era helped cement his place in American life and memory as a simple but remarkably effective bandit. After 1873 he was covered by the national media as part of social banditry. During his lifetime, James was celebrated chiefly by former Confederates, to whom he appealed directly in his letters to the press. Displaced by Reconstruction, the antebellum political leadership mythologized the James Gang exploits. Frank Triplett wrote about James as a "progressive neo-aristocrat" with purity of race. Indeed, some historians credit James' myth as contributing to the rise of former Confederates to dominance in Missouri politics (in the 1880s, for example, both U.S. Senators from the state, Confederate military commander Francis Cockrell and Confederate Congressman George Graham Vest, were identified with the Confederate cause).

In the 1880s, after James' death, the James Gang became the subject of dime novels that represented the bandits as pre-industrial models of resistance. During the Populist and Progressive eras, James became a symbol as America's Robin Hood, standing up against corporations in defense of the small farmer, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor while there is no evidence that his robberies enriched anyone other than his gang and himself.

In portrayals of the 1950s, James was pictured as a psychologically troubled individual rather than a social rebel. Some filmmakers portrayed the former outlaw as a revenger, replacing "social with exclusively personal motives."

Jesse James remains a controversial symbol, one who can always be interpreted in various ways, according to cultural tensions and needs. Although some of the neo-Confederate movement regard him as a hero renewed cultural battles over the place of the Civil War in American history have replaced the long-standing interpretation of James as a Western frontier hero. Some point to his absolute commitment to slavery and his vow after the Civil War to shoot any black in Missouri not fulfilling the role of a slave.

While his "heroic outlaw" image is still commonly portrayed in films, as well as in songs and folklore, recent historians place him as a self-aware vigilante and terrorist who used local tensions to create his own myth among the widespread insurgent guerrillas and vigilantes following the American Civil War.

Museums

Museums and sites devoted to Jesse James:

James Farm in Kearney, Missouri: In 1974 Clay County, Missouri, bought it. The county operates the site as a house museum and historic site. Jesse James Home Museum: The house where Jesse James was killed in south St. Joseph was moved in 1939 to the Belt Highway on St. Joseph's east side to attract tourists. In 1977 it was moved to its current location, near Patee House, which was the headquarters of the Pony Express. The house is now owned and operated by the Pony Express Historical Association. First National Bank of Northfield: The Northfield Historical Society in Northfield, Minnesota, has restored the building that housed the First National Bank, the scene of the 1876 raid.

Heaton Bowman Funeral Home, 36th Street and Frederick Avenue, St. Joseph, Missouri. The funeral home's predecessor conducted the original autopsy and funeral for Jesse James. A room in the back holds the log book and other documentation.

The Jesse James Tavern is in his father's birthplace in Asdee, County Kerry, Ireland, from where his father immigrated to the US in the 1840s as a young man. The parish priest, Canon William Ferris, says a solemn requiem mass for Jesse James every year on April 3.

Festivals

The Defeat of Jesse James Days in Northfield, Minnesota, is among the largest outdoor celebrations in the state and is held annually in September during the weekend after Labor Day, though it is is now documented and in dispute whether Jesse James was ever in Northfield because he was never indicted for his crimes. Thousands of visitors watch reenactments of the robbery, a championship rodeo, a carnival, performances of a 19th-century style melodrama musical, and a parade during the five-day event.

Jesse James' boyhood home in Kearney, Missouri, is a museum dedicated to the town's most famous resident. Each year a recreational fair, the Jesse James Festival, is held during the third weekend in September.

During the annual Labor Day weekend Victorian Festival at the 1866 Col. William H. Fulkerson estate Hazel Dell in Jersey County, Illinois, Jesse James' history is told in stories and by reenactments of stagecoach holdups. Over the three-day event, thousands of spectators learn of the documented James Gang's stopping point at Hazel Dell and of their connection with ex-Confederate Fulkerson.

Russellville, Kentucky, the site of the robbery of the Southern Bank in 1868, holds the Jesse James International Arts and Film Festival. The JJIAFF completed its second annual event in April 2008 and the third annual is planned for April 25, 2009. The festival has featured a bluegrass band from San Francisco and experimental bands from southern Kentucky as well as painters, sculptors, photographers, and comic artists. Children's activities are a mainstay of the festival. A highlight for adults is the film festival held at the Logan County Public Library in Russellville. Past entrants have included films from Norway and northwestern Kentucky, modern silent film projects, nature studies, and fan films.

In addition, the annual Tobacco and Heritage Festival in Russellville features a reenactment of the James-Younger Gang's robbery of the Southern Bank. Today used as a residence, the historic structure on South Main Street has been preserved by the town and county.

The small town of Oak Grove, Louisiana, also hosts a town-wide annual Jesse James Trade Days, usually in the early to mid fall. This is a reference to a short time James supposedly spent near this area.

Cultural depictions

Literature

The James brothers became a staple in dime novels of the era, peaking in the 1880s following Jesse's death. James has often been used as a fictional character in many Western novels, including some published while he was alive. For instance, in Willa Cather's ''My Antonia'', the narrator reads a book entitled 'Life of Jesse James' - probably a dime novel.

In Charles Portis's 1968 novel, ''True Grit'', the U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn describes fighting with Cole Younger and Frank James for the Confederacy during the Civil War. Long after his adventure with Mattie Ross, Cogburn ends his days in a traveling road show with the aged Cole Younger and Frank James.

During his travel to the "Wilde West," Oscar Wilde visited Jesse James' hometown in Missouri. Learning that James had been assassinated by his own gang member, "...an event that sent the town into mourning and scrambling to buy Jesse's artifacts," "romantic appeal of the social outcast" in his mind, Wilde wrote in one of his letters to home that: "Americans are certainly great hero-worshippers, and always take [their] heroes from the criminal classes."

Comics

In 1969, artist Morris and writer René Goscinny (co-creator of ''Asterix'') had Lucky Luke confronting Jesse James, his brother Frank, and Cole Younger. The adventure poked fun at the image of Jesse as a new Robin Hood. Although he passes himself off as such and does indeed steal from the rich (who are, logically, the only ones worth stealing from), he and his gang take turns being "poor," thus keeping the loot for themselves. Frank quotes from Shakespeare, and Younger is portrayed as a fun-loving joker, full of good humor. One critic has likened this version of the James brothers as "intellectuals bandits, who won't stop theorising their outlaw activities and hear themselves talk." In the end, the at-first-cowed people of a town fight back against the James gang and send them packing in tar and feathers.

Music

In his adaptation of the traditional song "Jesse James," Woody Guthrie magnified James's hero status. "Jesse James" was later covered by the Anglo-Irish band The Pogues on their 1985 album ''Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash'', and by Bruce Springsteen on his 2006 tribute to Pete Seeger, ''We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions''.

A somewhat different song titled "Jesse James," referring to Jesse's "wife to mourn for his life; three children, they were brave," and calling Robert Ford "the dirty little coward who shot Mr. Howard," was also the first track recorded by the "Stewart Years" version of the Kingston Trio at their initial recording session in 1961 (and included on that year's release ''Close-Up'').

Echoing the Confederate hero aspect, Hank Williams, Jr.'s 1983 Southern anthem "Whole Lot Of Hank" has the lyrics "Frank and Jesse James knowed how to rob them trains, they always took it from the rich and gave it to the poor, they might have had a bad name but they sure had a heart of gold."

Rock band James Gang was named after Jesse James's gang. Their final album, released in 1976, was titled ''Jesse Come Home''.

Warren Zevon's 1976 self-titled album ''Warren Zevon'' includes the song "Frank and Jesse James," a romantic tribute to the James Gang's exploits, expressing much sympathy with their "cause." Its lyrics encapsulate the many legends that grew up around the life and death of Jesse James. The album contains a second reference to Jesse James in the song "Poor Poor Pitiful Me" with the lyric "Well, I met a girl in West Hollywood, I ain't naming names. She really worked me over good, she was just like Jesse James." Linda Ronstadt covered the song a year later with slightly altered lyrics.

In her album ''Heart of Stone'' (1989), Cher included a song titled "Just Like Jesse James," written by Diane Warren. This single, which was released in 1990, achieved high positions in the charts and sold 1,500,000 copies worldwide.

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's album ''Uncle Charlie and His Dog Teddy'' features the song "Jesse James," ostensibly recorded on a wire recorder.

Jon Chandler has also written a song about Jesse and Frank James entitled "He Was No Hero," written from the perspective of Joe Hayward's widow cursing Bob Ford for cheating her out of killing Jesse James.

Around 1980 a concept album titled ''The Legend of Jesse James'' was released. It was written by Paul Kennerley and starred Levon Helm (The Band) as Jesse James, Johnny Cash as Frank James, Emmylou Harris as Zee James, Charlie Daniels as Cole Younger, and Albert Lee as Jim Younger. There are also appearances by Rodney Crowell, Jody Payne, and Roseanne Cash. The album highlights Jesse's life from 1863 to his death in 1882. In 1999 a double CD was released containing ''The Legend Of Jesse James'' and ''White Mansions,'' another concept album by Kennerley about life in the Confederate States of America between 1861-1865.

Films

There have been numerous portrayals of Jesse James in film and television, including two wherein Jesse James, Jr. depicts his father. In many of the films, James is portrayed as a Robin Hood-like character.

1921: ''Jesse James Under the Black Flag'', played by Jesse James, Jr.

1921: ''Jesse James as the Outlaw'', played by Jesse James, Jr.

1927: ''Jesse James'', played by Fred Thomson

1939: ''Jesse James'', played by Tyrone Power with Henry Fonda as Frank James and John Carradine as Bob Ford

1939: ''Days of Jesse James'', played by Don 'Red' Barry

1941: ''Jesse James at Bay'', played by Roy Rogers

1947: ''Jesse James Rides Again'', played by Clayton Moore

1949: ''I Shot Jesse James'', played by Reed Hadley

1950: ''Kansas Raiders'', played by Audie Murphy

1951: ''The Great Missouri Raid'', played by Macdonald Carey

1954: ''Jesse James Women'' played by Don 'Red' Barry

1957: ''True Story of Jesse James'', played by Robert Wagner

1959: ''Alias Jesse James'', played by Wendell Corey in a comedy starring Bob Hope

1960: ''Young Jesse James'', played by Ray Stricklyn

1965: ''The Legend of Jesse James'', TV series starred by Allen Case

1966: ''Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter'', played by John Lupton

1969: ''A Time for Dying'', played by Audie Murphy

1972: ''The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid'', played by Robert Duvall

1980: ''The Long Riders'', played by James Keach

1986: ''The Last Days of Frank and Jesse James'', played by Kris Kristofferson with Johnny Cash as Frank James and Willie Nelson as Gen. Jo Shelby

1994: ''Frank and Jesse'', played by Rob Lowe

1999: ''Purgatory'', played by J.D. Souther

2001: ''American Outlaws'', played by Colin Farrell

2005: ''Just like Jesse James'' is the title of a movie that appears in Wim Wenders' ''Don't Come Knocking'', in which Sam Shepard plays an aging western movie star whose first success was with that movie.

2005: ''Jesse James: Legend, Outlaw, Terrorist'' (Discovery HD), played by Daniel Lennox

2007: ''The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford'', played by Brad Pitt, with Casey Affleck as Bob Ford

Television

The actor Lee Van Cleef played Jesse James in a 1954 episode of Jim Davis's syndicated television series, ''Stories of the Century'', the first western series to win an Emmy Award.

The ABC series ''The Legend of Jesse James'' aired during the 1965-1966 television season, with Christopher Jones as Jesse, Allen Case as Frank James, Ann Doran as Zerelda Cole James Samuel, Robert J. Wilke as Marshal Sam Corbett, and John Milford as Cole Younger.

In the episode of ''Little House on the Prairie'' titled "The Aftermath" (aired November 7, 1977), Jesse (Dennis Rucker) and Frank James (John Bennett Perry) took refuge in Walnut Grove after a failed robbery attempt.

In the American Western series ''The Young Riders'' (1989–1992), Jesse James is portrayed by the late actor Christopher Pettiet. He appeared in 17 episodes.

An episode of ''Deadliest Warrior'' on "Spike TV" features the Jesse James gang vs. the Al Capone gang. The main weapons used by Jesse James was the Colt .45, the Pistol Whip, the Winchester rifle, and the Bowie Knife. The Jesse James gang came out victorious in the simulated match.

In Episode 33 of ''Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction'' in a segment titled "Mysterious Strangers," a story is told about two men in 1870 who take refuge on a rainy night in an old widow's house. While there they find out that she is about to lose her home to foreclosure. The strangers disappear in the night, leaving her $900 to give to the banker, only to rob the banker of their own money after he retrieved it from the woman the next morning. The strangers, at the end of the story, turn out to be Frank and Jesse James. ''Beyond Belief'' purports that the story is documented and true.

References

Bibliography

Fellman, Michael. ''Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri onto the American Civil War''. Oxford University Press, 1990. ISBN 0195064712.

Settle, William A. ''Jesse James Was His Name, or, Fact and Fiction Concerning the Careers of the Notorious James Brothers of Missouri''. University of Nebraska Press, 1977. ISBN 0803258607.

Stiles, T. J. ''Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War''. Knopf Publishing, 2002. ISBN 0375405836.

Yeatman, Ted P. ''Frank and Jesse James: The Story Behind the Legend''. Cumberland House Publishing, 2000. ISBN 1581823258.

Further reading

Dyer, Robert. "Jesse James and the Civil War in Missouri,"University of Missouri Press, 1994

Hobsbawm, Eric J. ''Bandits'', Pantheon, 1981

Koblas, John J. ''Faithful Unto Death'', Northfield Historical Society Press, 2001

Thelen, David. ''Paths of Resistance: Tradition and Dignity in Industrializing Missouri'', Oxford University Press, 1986

Wellman, Paul I. ''A Dynasty of Western Outlaws''. Doubleday, 1961; 1986.

White, Richard. "Outlaw Gangs of the Middle Border: American Social Bandits," ''Western Historical Quarterly'' 12, no. 4 (October 1981)

External links

Primary sources and essays by Jesse James biographer T. J. Stiles

Official website for the Family of Jesse James

Death pics Jesse James

Death of Jesse James with pictures from the National Archives and Library of Congress

A 1901 newspaper interview with the Younger brothers

Category:1847 births Category:1882 deaths Category:People from Kearney, Missouri Category:American people of Welsh descent Category:Bushwhackers Category:James-Younger Gang Category:Outlaws of the American Old West Category:1869 crimes Category:1882 crimes Category:American bank robbers Category:American murder victims Category:Missouri State Guard Category:People murdered in Missouri Category:Deaths by firearm in Missouri Category:American folklore Category:People of the American Old West

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