Was King James II persecuted by the Catholic Church?

[hope_ard]

A friend told me that King James II of England was persecuted by the Catholic Church. According to my friend, the Catholic Church did not want King James translating the Holy Scriptures into the local tongues because they did not want common people reading it. Is this true? I have tried to do some of my own research, but the many sources I have come upon are not very reliable.

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

I’m afraid your friend is very confused. King James II (1633-1701) was himself a Catholic, indeed the last Catholic monarch of England. Far from persecuting the Catholic Church, James was driven from the throne by Protestants (led by his own daughter and son-in-law) for the “crime” of producing a Catholic male heir to succeed him. To make certain that would never happen again, Parliament quickly passed laws to forbid a Catholic from ever again inheriting the British throne and to forbid a British monarch from marrying a Catholic (which was the “crime” of James’s older brother, King Charles II). This episode is better known to British history students as the so-called Glorious Revolution.

Your friend is probably thinking of King James I (1566-1625), who authorized the Protestant translation of the Bible that both bears his name (the King James Version) and is known as the Authorized Version. This James ultimately chose to continue the anti-Catholic policies of his predecessor Queen Elizabeth I, mainly because his anti-Catholic minister and spymaster Robert Cecil chose, as it is widely believed, to nurture and then (at the opportune time) “expose” the Gunpowder Plot that was hatched by some disaffected Catholics to blow up Parliament and assassinate the king and his family. Whatever the case with the Gunpowder Plot, the Catholic Church as an institution did not persecute James I for authorizing a translation of Scripture.