Mary II

Timeline

1. 1662–1677St James's Palace · LondonBorn at St James's Palace in London, eldest daughter of James, Duke of York, and Anne Hyde. Her uncle Charles II had no legitimate children, leaving her high in the line of succession. Educated as an Anglican at the king's command, she and her sister Anne moved to Richmond Palace, only occasionally visiting their converted parents. Her mother died in 1671, and her father remarried Mary of Modena in 1673.
2. 1677–1688The Hague · HollandShe married her cousin William of Orange at St James's Palace on 4 November 1677 and soon left for the Netherlands, formally entering The Hague in December. Popular in the United Provinces, she suffered several miscarriages and never had children. When her father acceded in 1685 she became heiress presumptive; after the birth of the Catholic heir in 1688, English opponents invited William to invade, while she remained in the Netherlands and agreed to her husband being king for life.
3. 1689–1694London · Greater LondonShe and William accepted Parliament's crown in February 1689 and were crowned at Westminster Abbey on 11 April; the Bill of Rights that year confirmed the joint monarchy and Protestant succession. During William's campaigns in Ireland and on the Continent she governed independently with the advice of a nine-member privy council, and ordered the arrest of her uncle the Earl of Clarendon for plotting a restoration. She contracted smallpox in late 1694 and died at Kensington Palace at only thirty-two.