Edward Jenner

NAME Edward Jenner. He was widely known in his later life and posthumously as "The Father of Immunology," a title reflecting his status as the pioneer of the world's first vaccine. 

WHAT FAMOUS FOR Edward Jenner was an English physician and scientist who discovered the smallpox vaccine, the world’s first successful vaccine. Smallpox was a scourge of the eighteenth century, killing in Europe alone sixty million and all but five percent of those who survived suffered facial pockmark scarring. By proving that infection with the mild cowpox virus conferred lifetime immunity against the deadly smallpox virus, Jenner laid the foundations for modern immunology, ultimately leading to the global eradication of smallpox in 1980.

BIRTH Born May 17, 1749, in the village of Berkeley,  on the banks of the River Severn, in Gloucestershire, England, the eighth of nine children. (1)

FAMILY BACKGROUND His father, the Reverend Stephen Jenner, was the Vicar of Berkeley and Rector of Rockhampton — a clergyman of some means with landed property in Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, and a former tutor to an Earl of Berkeley. 

His mother was the daughter of the Reverend Henry Head, a member of an old and respectable Berkshire family. 

When Edward was only five years old, his father died, and he was raised by an older brother, also in Holy Orders, who encouraged in the boy a natural love of country life and a taste for natural history. (2) 

CHILDHOOD As a young child Jenner was inoculated against smallpox by the commonly used practice of variolation — deliberate infection with live smallpox material — which had a lifelong effect on his general health. (3) 

Before he was nine, Edward Jenner is said to have made a collection of dormouse nests — an early sign of his keen naturalist instincts. He attended school at Wotton-under-Edge and later was placed in the care of the Reverend Dr. Washbourn at Cirencester, where he received a sound classical education. It was around this time that he became a lifelong friend of Caleb Hillier Parry, a fellow enthusiast for fossil collecting. (2)

EDUCATION At age 13 (some sources say 14), Jenner was apprenticed for seven years to Daniel Ludlow, a surgeon of Chipping Sodbury, South Gloucestershire. (4)

In 1770, aged 21, he became a pupil of the eminent surgeon and scientist John Hunter at St George's Hospital in London — Hunter's inquiring mind and passion for experimentation proved a profound influence on the young medical student. Hunter reportedly passed on William Harvey's maxim: "Don't think; try." In 1792, after twenty years of general practice and surgery, Jenner obtained the degree of MD from the University of St Andrews. 

CAREER RECORD 1770: Jenner moved to London to train at St George's Hospital under the pioneering surgeon John Hunter, while also helping arrange natural history specimens brought back from Captain James Cook's first voyage. 

1773: He returned to his native Gloucestershire, establishing a highly successful practice as a countryside family doctor and surgeon in Berkeley. 

1788: Jenner was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society following his breakthrough zoological paper on the nesting habits of the cuckoo. 

1792: He obtained his formal medical degree (MD) from the University of St Andrews. 

1796: Jenner performed his historic first vaccination on young James Phipps, successfully establishing the science of vaccinology.

1821: He reached the pinnacle of his professional status when he was appointed Physician Extraordinary to King George IV.

APPEARANCE Jenner took evident pride in his appearance. He was described as a vigorous countryman with an active, outdoor constitution. (5)

Jenner was described by his close friend Edward Gardner as being rather under the middle size in height, with a robust, active, and well-formed frame. He had a pleasant, open countenance, with thoughtful blue eyes — a detail corroborated by the National Portrait Gallery's catalogue entry for his portrait by James Northcote, which records "grey-brown hair, blue eyes, rosy complexion" — and a neat, clean-shaven face. (6) 

His best-known portrait, by John Raphael Smith (1800), shows a composed and dignified figure.  

Edward Jenner by by John Raphael Smith 

FASHION Jenner was described as "peculiarly neat" in his dress, always presenting himself as a serious man well-prepared for his professional duties. His friend and biographer John Baron, in an account quoted by Joseph Pettigrew, recorded that on first meeting Jenner in 1808 he was dressed in "a blue coat, nankeen breeches and white stockings" — the respectable, practical attire of a prosperous Georgian country doctor. 

Some accounts add well-polished top boots and a beaver hat as part of his visiting outfit, consistent with the fashion of a gentleman physician of the period, though these details are harder to pin to a single verified primary source. In certain formal portraits, Jenner is depicted with his clothing draped in a manner deliberately reminiscent of a classical Roman toga — a common artistic convention of the era used by portrait painters to confer an air of authority and timeless dignity upon their subjects, rather than a reflection of Jenner's actual dress. (7)

CHARACTER Jenner was described as conscientious, modest, curious, and observant, keeping meticulous notes and possessing a happy combination of common sense and scientific logic. He was adept at social gatherings, vigorous in country pursuits, and remained a beloved figure in his local community throughout his life. 

Jenner was notable for his generosity: he chose never to patent his vaccine, sharing his discovery freely to prioritise public health over personal profit. He built a cottage for James Phipps, the boy on whom he had first tested his vaccine, near his own home. (5) 

SPEAKING VOICE No detailed description of Jenner's speaking voice survives in the historical record. What is clear, however, is that he was a compelling and wide-ranging conversationalist. Contemporary accounts record that "educated people loved his conversation" and that his range of topics was vast — "sometimes serious, at others witty." He was so engaging in company that patients and friends would often ask permission to ride home with him after visits, even at midnight, accompanying him for miles on his rounds simply to enjoy his talk. That he had a good command of words is also evidenced by his poetry and his crisp, lucid scientific writing. (8)

SENSE OF HUMOUR Jenner had a genuine and well-documented wit. He was fond of the epigram — one surviving example, On the Death of a Miser, runs: "Tom at last has laid by his old niggardly forms.  And now gives good dinners; to whom, pray? The worms." 

His letters reveal a dry, self-aware humour: writing to a friend in 1805, by which point he was a household name, he described himself with mock grandeur as "Vaccine Clerk to the World." The tone of many of his personal letters is candid, occasionally grumpy, and deliberately comic — he was clearly a man who did not feel the need to perform dignity among friends. (8)

RELATIONSHIPS In March 1788, Jenner married Catherine Kingscote. According to one charming account, they may have first met when a trial hot-air balloon launched by Jenner and fellow scientists descended into Kingscote Park, Gloucestershire, the estate of Catherine's father, Anthony Kingscote. 

They had three children together: Edward Robert (1789–1810), Catherine Fitzhardinge (1794–1833), and Robert Fitzhardinge (1797–1854) — the last of whom was only 11 months old when his father inoculated him with the cowpox vaccine. 

Tragically, his wife suffered from chronic tuberculosis, and Jenner spent much of his time devotedly nursing her until her death in 1815, a loss that left him heartbroken. 

Professionally, he maintained an exceptionally close, lifelong mentor-student friendship with John Hunter.

MONEY AND FAME Jenner was granted £10,000 by Parliament in 1802 for his vaccination work, and a further £20,000 in 1807 — substantial sums for the era. 

He became internationally celebrated in his own lifetime; Napoleon made his troops submit to Jenner's vaccine and awarded him a medal, even though Britain and France were at war. 

Despite his fame and financial recognition, Jenner remained a modest country practitioner living at the Chantry in Berkeley. (5)

FOOD AND DRINK No detailed record of Jenner's specific dietary preferences or drinking habits survives in the historical record. What is documented is that he was a sociable and convivial man who greatly valued the pleasures of good company around a table. He was a founder member of the Gloucestershire Medical Society, which met regularly at the Fleece Inn, Rodborough, where members combined dining together with the reading and discussion of medical papers — an arrangement that clearly suited his gregarious nature and his habit of mixing scientific inquiry with friendship.

MUSIC AND ARTS Jenner enjoyed singing and played both the flute and the fiddle. He was a cultivated man of broad tastes and participated readily in the social and cultural life of Georgian Gloucestershire. (5)

LITERATURE Jenner wrote poetry about the countryside, reflecting his deep love of the natural world. (5) 

His scientific publications, notably An Inquiry Into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinæ (1798), are precise and lucid in their prose. He also contributed papers on angina pectoris, ophthalmia, and cardiac valvular disease to the Gloucestershire Medical Society. 

NATURE Jenner had a passionate and lifelong interest in natural history. As a child he collected dormouse nests; as an adult he made a careful scientific study of the cuckoo, correctly describing for the first time how the newly hatched cuckoo ejects host eggs and chicks from the nest using a hollow in its back — findings published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1788 and sufficient to convince Charles Darwin to revise a later edition of On the Origin of Species. 

Image by Gemini

In 1771, he was employed by Sir Joseph Banks to arrange and prepare the zoological and botanical specimens brought back from Captain Cook's first voyage — work he performed with such skill that he was subsequently offered the prestigious post of naturalist on Cook's second expedition, which sailed in 1772. He declined, choosing instead to pursue medicine in Gloucestershire. Had he accepted, the history of vaccination might have been very different. (9)

In the last year of his life, he presented "Observations on the Migration of Birds" to the Royal Society. 

He was also a keen fossil collector, particularly of the oolitic formations near Cirencester. (4)

PETS Jenner kept cows — most famously the cow Blossom, whose hide now hangs on the wall of St George's Medical School library in London — and lived the life of a Gloucestershire country gentleman surrounded by animals and farmland. (1)

HOBBIES AND SPORTS Jenner was a keen horticulturist and fossil collector. 

He was an enthusiastic naturalist who combined his hobbies with scientific inquiry. 

Jenner also enjoyed social evenings at the Gloucestershire Medical Society, which met at the Fleece Inn, Rodborough, where members dined and read papers on medical subjects. 

SCIENCE AND MATHS Jenner's greatest scientific achievement was the development of the world's first vaccine. He demonstrated that cowpox inoculation conferred immunity against smallpox, a disease that in his era killed around 10% of the global population — and up to 20% in towns and cities. 

Edward Jenner advising a farmer to vaccinate his family by https://wellcomeimages.org/

His scientific method was rigorous: he observed, hypothesised, and systematically tested, ultimately reporting on 23 cases. 

Jenner also contributed to the understanding of angina pectoris; in correspondence with William Heberden he wrote: "How much the heart must suffer from the coronary arteries not being able to perform their functions."

His zoological work on the cuckoo demonstrated the same meticulous observational approach.

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Jenner was a sincere Christian, neither fanatic nor lax, who expressed genuine spiritual feeling in his personal correspondence. 

He expressed his Christian faith quietly but sincerely; shortly before his death he told a friend: "I am not surprised that men are not grateful to me; but I wonder that they are not grateful to God for the good which He has made me the instrument of conveying to my fellow creatures." 

Jenner was also a Freemason, becoming a master mason on December 30, 1802, in the Lodge of Faith and Friendship #449, and serving as worshipful master of Royal Berkeley Lodge of Faith and Friendship from 1812 to 1813. He served as a Justice of the Peace, reflecting his sense of civic duty and moral responsibility. 

POLITICS He served as a Justice of the Peace, reflecting his sense of civic duty and moral responsibility. 

Jenner lobbied Parliament successfully for financial recognition of his vaccination work and was supported by King George III in petitioning for the grants of 1802 and 1807. 

In 1821, he was appointed physician extraordinary to King George IV and made Mayor of Berkeley. 

He took no prominent role in party politics.

SCANDAL Critics — particularly the clergy — condemned vaccination as repulsive and ungodly, arguing it was abhorrent to inoculate a person with material from a diseased animal. Some also argued that vaccination took away the power of life and death from God. Jenner's ethical standing was never seriously questioned, though his decision to inoculate his own infant son attracted some criticism. The Church objected in no uncertain terms to the whole enterprise. (3)

A famous satirical cartoon of 1802 by James Gillray depicted patients who had been vaccinated sprouting cow's heads and other bovine appendages. 

James Gillray's 1802 caricature of Jenner vaccinating patients

MILITARY RECORD Jenner held no military rank or service. His most notable indirect connection to military matters was that Napoleon Bonaparte, despite being at war with Britain, ordered the mass vaccination of all French troops after accepting the value of Jenner's discovery, and at Jenner's personal request released English prisoners of war. 

MEDICAL CAREER Edward Jenner's route to immortality was not an obvious one. He began his medical career apprenticed to a surgeon in the Gloucestershire town of Chipping Sodbury before studying under the formidable John Hunter at St George's Hospital in London — a man whose advice to curious young scientists was essentially, "Don't speculate. Go and find out." Jenner took that instruction rather seriously.

Returning to his native Berkeley around 1773, he settled into the respectable life of a country doctor and surgeon. He treated generations of local families, investigated heart disease, and helped advance understanding of angina pectoris. Yet it was a piece of rural folklore, rather than anything from London's medical textbooks, that changed the course of history.

Country people had long noticed that milkmaids who caught cowpox seemed mysteriously protected from the far deadlier smallpox. Jenner investigated and discovered that the story contained a crucial grain of truth. On May 14, 1796, he conducted an experiment that would become one of the most famous in medical history. Using material taken from cowpox sores on the hands of a milkmaid named Sarah Nelmes — who had caught the infection from a cow with the wonderfully unscientific name of Blossom — he inoculated an eight-year-old boy, James Phipps. The boy subsequently proved immune to smallpox. 

Jenner performing his first vaccination on James Phipps by Ernest Board

It sounds astonishingly simple now, but at the time many members of the medical establishment regarded Jenner's ideas with amusement, scepticism, or outright scorn. Some critics even suggested that vaccination might cause patients to develop bovine characteristics, which was an impressive feat of imagination even by eighteenth-century standards. Yet the evidence kept accumulating, and vaccination steadily won converts.

The consequences were extraordinary. In 1840, Britain banned variolation — the risky practice of deliberately infecting people with smallpox — and offered vaccination free of charge. 

Jenner's discovery soon travelled far beyond Gloucestershire. Between 1803 and 1806, the Spanish Balmis Expedition carried the vaccine across the Atlantic and around the world, immunising thousands throughout the Americas, the Philippines, Macao and China. 

It was one of history's most ambitious public-health campaigns, all stemming from a country doctor's willingness to take seriously something milkmaids had known all along.

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS The variolation Jenner underwent as a child had a permanent adverse effect on his general health. He was otherwise described as a vigorous countryman throughout his adult life. (5) 

HOMES Jenner lived for most of his life at The Chantry, Church Lane, Berkeley, Gloucestershire, which is now the Jenner Museum. (6) 

The Chantry by Nick from Bristol, UK

He also spent periods in London, particularly during the height of his campaigning for vaccination. He built a cottage near his Berkeley home for James Phipps, the boy on whom he had first tested his vaccine. (5)

TRAVEL His primary sphere of activity was always Gloucestershire, but Jenner travelled to London at various points in his career — notably in 1798 when he sought (unsuccessfully at first) to demonstrate vaccination to the medical community. (3) 

His vaccine,travelled the world without him: Napoleon's troops, the Spanish Empire's colonies, and ultimately the entire globe were reached by his discovery. 

DEATH Jenner was found in a state of apoplexy on January 25, 1823, with his right side paralysed. He never fully recovered and died on January 26, 1823, of an apparent stroke — his second — aged 73. (3) 

He was buried in the family vault at the Church of St Mary, Berkeley, Gloucestershire. 

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA Jenner has been commemorated on Royal Mail postage stamps, appearing in the World Changers issue of 1999 alongside Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday, and Alan Turing. 

A statue of Jenner was erected in Trafalgar Square and later moved to Kensington Gardens, London. Another statue stands in the nave of Gloucester Cathedral. 

A play, POX by Janet Bolam, was performed by the Cotswold Players in the garden of Jenner's house in 2025. 

 He featured in a BBC True Stories dramatisation recounting his life and discovery of vaccination. 

The lunar crater Jenner and the minor planet 5168 Jenner are both named in his honour. 

ACHIEVEMENTS Creator of the world's first vaccine and pioneer of immunology. 

Coined the terms vaccine and vaccination, derived from the Latin vacca (cow). 

His work led directly to the global eradication of smallpox, declared by the World Health Organisation in 1980. 

Elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1788 for his landmark study of the cuckoo. 

Appointed physician extraordinary to King George IV in 1821.

Recipient of parliamentary grants totalling £30,000 in recognition of his service to humanity. 

Napoleon Bonaparte, his country's wartime enemy, declared he could not "refuse anything to one of the greatest benefactors of mankind." 

Sources: (1) Wikipedia – Edward Jenner (2) Royal Society – Edward Jenner FRS, 1749–1823 (3) Encyclopaedia of Trivia – Edward Jenner (4) EBSCO Research Starters – Edward Jenner (5) Archives of Disease in Childhood – Edward Jenner profile (6) National Portrait Gallery – Edward Jenner portrait catalogue (7) Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh – Fashion and the Physician (8) SAGE Journals – Edward Jenner (9) PMC – Edward Jenner

Thomas Jefferson

NAME Thomas Jefferson. He was often referred to by contemporaries as the "Sage of Monticello," a title that reflected his vast intellect and philosophical retirement. 

WHAT FAMOUS FOR Thomas Jefferson was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third President of the United States. He is world-renowned as the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. He expanded the United States significantly through the Louisiana Purchase and championed the strict separation of church and state, declaring that there should be a "wall of separation" between the two.

BIRTH Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743, at the family home, a one-and-a-half-story farmhouse in Shadwell, Albemarle County, Virginia. The third of ten children, most of whom died early in life. (1)

FAMILY BACKGROUND Jefferson's father, Colonel Peter Jefferson, was a land surveyor who was one of the surveyors who helped lay out the Virginia–North Carolina border. 

Jefferson's mother, Jane Randolph, was of old Virginian aristocracy, the daughter of Isham Randolph, a ship's captain and sometime planter. Jefferson and his mother did not have a close relationship. When her house burnt down, his first question was "what about my books?" — it never occurred to him to invite his homeless mother into his own home. (2)

CHILDHOOD Seven of Jefferson's first nine years were spent at Tuckahoe, the Randolph estate on the James River near Richmond. When Jefferson was nine, the family moved back to their Shadwell home. 

When not at school, young Thomas went with his father to hunt deer and turkeys along the Rivanna River. He also liked to go for long walks in the mountains. Colonel Jefferson died when Thomas was 14. (3)

EDUCATION Jefferson began his childhood education under the direction of tutors at the Randolph Tuckahoe estate, alongside the Randolph children. In 1752, at the age of nine, Thomas began attending the school of the Reverend William Douglas, a Scottish Presbyterian minister, where he studied Latin, Greek, and French. He also learned to ride horses and began to appreciate the study of nature.

At the age of 14, in 1757, Thomas was sent to the classical school of the Reverend James Maury, near Gordonsville, Virginia. While boarding with Maury's family, he studied history, science, and the classics.

At age 16, in 1760, Jefferson entered the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, where he studied mathematics, metaphysics, and philosophy under Professor William Small. In 1762, Professor Small suggested to America's first law professor, George Wythe, that he supervise the legal training of the star student. Jefferson studied law with Wythe, who became his friend and mentor. Jefferson was admitted to the bar of the General Court of Virginia in 1767.

CAREER RECORD 1767 — Admitted to the bar of the General Court of Virginia. Lived with his mother at the Shadwell family home and practiced law up and down the Valley from Staunton to Winchester. His client list featured members of Virginia's elite families, including members of the Randolph family.

1769–1775 — Represented Albemarle County in the Virginia House of Burgesses, beginning May 11, 1769 and ending June 20, 1775.

1776 — Principally responsible for drafting the Declaration of Independence, regarded as the strongest and most eloquent writer among the Founding Fathers.

1779–1781 — Served as Governor of Virginia.

1782 — Appointed a peace commissioner to assist Benjamin Franklin and John Adams in peace negotiations, but his ship was icebound in Chesapeake Bay and his appointment was withdrawn.

1783 — As chairman of the Currency Committee, devised the dollar and cents system still used to this day.

1784–1789 — Sent by the Confederation Congress to Europe to join Franklin and John Adams as ministers for purposes of negotiating commercial trade agreements with England, Spain, and France. Departed Boston on July 5, 1784. Served as United States Minister to France between 1785 and 1789. Was present in Paris during the storming of the Bastille and consulted with the Marquis de Lafayette while the latter drafted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

1790–1793 — Served as the first Secretary of State under President Washington. Resigned in 1793 in protest at Alexander Hamilton's attempts to centralize government and what Jefferson regarded as his financial impropriety. Retired to his Virginian farm for the next four years.

1791–1793 — Co-founded the Democratic-Republican Party with James Madison, organized to oppose Hamilton's Federalist Party. The party came to power in 1800 and dominated national and state affairs until the 1820s.

1797–1801 — Served as Vice President to President John Adams after coming second in the 1796 presidential election.

1801–1809 — Served two terms as the third President of the United States.

1819 — Co-founded the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. The university's first classes met on March 7, 1825. 

APPEARANCE Jefferson was six feet two and a half inches in height, large-boned, slim, erect, and sinewy, and was nicknamed because of his tall figure and spindly limbs. He had a very ruddy complexion, red hair that became sandy as he aged, hazel-flecked grey eyes, and a long, high nose. 

He had big feet, wearing size 12½ shoes. 

Jefferson stood and walked straight and, owing to his plentiful hair, with no need of a wig. 

The writer Gore Vidal once observed: "For those who believe the old saw that an honest man must have a direct gaze, I refer them to a contemporary's report that the shiftiest-eyed man he had ever met was Thomas Jefferson." (3)

A 48-year-old Jefferson in 1791, in a portrait by Charles Willson Peale

FASHION In the fashion of his time, Jefferson dressed in a long, dark coat — usually blue, and in summer generally of silk — a ruffled stock or cravat in place of the modern necktie, a red waistcoat, short knee breeches, and shoes with bright buckles. 

Except during his days of courtship and married life, Jefferson paid little attention to clothes. Never a fan of formal affairs, he was often reported to have worn his pajamas while meeting with foreign dignitaries. When he was President, Jefferson made a habit of plainness, both in dress and in matters of ceremony. (3)

CHARACTER Urban and cultivated, Jefferson was courteous, bowing to everyone he met. There was grace in his manners, and his frank and earnest address, quick sympathy, and vivacious, informing talk gave him an engaging charm. On the debit side, he was chilly and impenetrable and seemed cold to strangers. (3)

SPEAKING VOICE Jefferson was a poor public speaker with a thin, fine voice. He talked with his arms folded and hated public speaking so much that he gave only two speeches during his entire presidency — one per term. (2)

SENSE OF HUMOUR Though it is a biographical tradition that Jefferson lacked wit, Molière and Don Quixote appear to have been among his favourite reading, suggesting a taste for comic writing. (3)

RELATIONSHIPS Thomas Jefferson married a young widow, 23-year-old Martha Skelton (1748–1782), described as small and pretty, on New Year's Day, 1772, at the Forest, Charles City County. 

They had six children: Martha Jane, an unnamed son, Mary (called Polly by Jefferson), and two daughters both named Lucy. Four of their children died in infancy. After the death of the fourth child in 1782, Martha succumbed to grief and prolonged illness, dying on September 6, 1782. Jefferson vowed never to remarry. (3)

Mary died in 1804; Jefferson had inscribed on her tombstone two lines from the Iliad: "If in the house of Hades, men forget their dead, yet will I even there remember my dear companion."

Only Martha, his firstborn child, outlived him.

Portrait of Jefferson's daughter, Martha by Thomas Sully

Jefferson also had at least one child, a light-skinned boy called "yellow Tom," with his teenage black chambermaid, Sarah "Sally" Hemings. Sally Hemings was the daughter of widowed planter John Wayles and a mixed-race woman he kept as a slave, Betty Hemings. Sally and her siblings were three-quarters European and half-siblings of Jefferson's wife, Martha Wayles Skelton. She had olive skin and long straight auburn hair, coming to Monticello as an infant as part of Martha's inheritance. (3)

MONEY AND FAME In 1819, Jefferson's close friend Wilson Cary Nicholas carelessly defaulted on a $20,000 bank loan and then died shortly afterwards. Jefferson had co-signed for the loan and was now liable for the debts. Upset and embarrassed, he suffered from gross indigestion for several days. 

By the age of 83 he was completely broke and deeply in debt. He was allowed to sell lottery tickets, the winner receiving the former president's land, but the lottery was not a success and he died in debt. 

Jefferson's all-round genius was summed up by President John F. Kennedy, who once said to his Nobel Prize-winning guests: "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House — with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." (3)

FOOD AND DRINK  After serving as ambassador to France, Jefferson brought back to America a taste for ice cream, which he delighted in serving to his guests. 

Thomas Jefferson presenting ice cream to guests

He also introduced Americans to fried potatoes, having sampled them in Paris; he described them as "potatoes, fried in the French manner" with beefsteak. He returned from France with a waffle iron and a pasta-making machine, which he used to serve macaroni or spaghetti. Jefferson helped popularize "Mac 'n' Cheese" by serving it to dinner guests during his presidency. (5)

Jefferson was an enthusiastic wine connoisseur. During his ambassadorship to France in the 1780s, he made several tours of European wine regions and sent bottles of the finest back to America. Following his return, he attempted to replicate these wines at Monticello by planting extensive vineyards, but a significant portion were destroyed by vine diseases native to the Americas. Jefferson installed a small, innovative shelved elevator at Monticello to carry wine from his cellar to his dining room.

Jefferson planted some of the first Brussels sprouts in America and also grew tomatoes at Monticello — not to eat, but as a curiosity. Not many colonists at the time realized tomatoes were edible; indeed, many Americans feared them to be poisonous. (3), 

MUSIC AND ARTS Jefferson liked to sing and tended to hum or sing as he walked or rode. He played the violin, sang pleasantly, and amassed over 500 pieces of music, including violin works by Corelli, Handel, and Vivaldi. Christmas celebrations at the White House and at Monticello included Jefferson playing the violin for family and guests. He also enjoyed attending operas. 

He supervised his daughter's music education, hiring Frances Alberti, an Italian immigrant, as a music tutor. Jefferson's oldest daughter, Martha, played harpsichord, and his other daughter, Maria, played guitar. (3)

LITERATURE A naturally succinct writer, Jefferson claimed "the most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do." He generally wrote with his "Polygraph," a machine in which an automatic pen inscribed a facsimile of a manuscript. 

Jefferson liked to invent words: "belittle" was one of his most famous coinages, appearing in his 1780 book Notes on the State of Virginia, in which he wrote: "So far the Count de Buffon has carried this new theory of the tendency of nature to belittle her productions on this side of the Atlantic." Surprisingly, Notes on the State of Virginia was the only book Jefferson published in his lifetime.

Jefferson could read and write in six languages — English, Spanish, French, Latin, Italian, and Ancient Greek — and was fluent in more languages than any other American president to date. He also studied and wrote on Old English and had a knowledge of German, Arabic, Irish, and Welsh.

Jefferson was largely responsible for drafting the 1776 Declaration of Independence, being regarded as the strongest and most eloquent writer among the Founding Fathers. He wrote it between June 11 and 28, 1776, from a floor he was renting in a home at 700 Market Street in Center City Philadelphia. Below in John Trumbull's painting Declaration of Independence, the five-man drafting committee presents its work to the Continental Congress. 

In retirement at Monticello, Jefferson gave up reading newspapers almost entirely, writing to John Norval: "I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it." He went further still, declaring: "The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors."

The one exception to his contempt was the advertisements. Jefferson noted, with characteristic dry wit: "Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper." (6)

In January 1815, Congress purchased Jefferson's personal library for $23,950; the 6,500 volumes became the nucleus of the Library of Congress. (3)

NATURE Jefferson experimented with new varieties of grain at Monticello, introduced the threshing machine into the United States, and was one of the first Americans to employ crop rotation. 

He studied and classified fossils at a time when investigation of such objects was in its infancy. 

When exploring a Native American burial mound on his Virginia estate in 1784, Jefferson avoided the common practice of simply digging downwards. Instead, he cut a wedge out of the mound so that he could walk into it, examine the layers of occupation, and draw conclusions from them — one of the earliest significant works of archaeology in American history. 

When he was Secretary of State, a plant was named after him — the Jeffersonia diphylla — because "in botany and zoology, the information of this gentleman is equaled by few persons in the United States." (3)

PETS Jefferson kept a Shetland sheep among about 40 other sheep on President's Square in front of the White House. In the spring of 1808 it attacked several people, killed a small boy, and was referred to Jefferson as "this abominable animal." After being moved to Monticello, the ram was eventually killed, having killed several other rams. 

Jefferson had little tolerance for dogs that harmed his sheep and once ordered one of his sheepdogs to be hanged for mauling livestock. 

Jefferson once had a mockingbird that he taught to peck food from his lips and to hop up the stairs after him. (3)

Image by ChatGBT

HOBBIES AND SPORTS Jefferson was an avid collector and player of marbles. 

A good horseback rider, he often rode for pleasure. 

The dome on his Monticello home concealed a billiard room — in Jefferson's day, billiards was illegal in Virginia. (3)

SCIENCE AND MATHS In 1783, as chairman of the Currency Committee, Jefferson devised the dollar and cents system still used in the United States to this day. 

Jefferson invented many small practical devices; he is credited with inventing the lever-operated double door opener, still often seen on trains and buses, and the folding chair — both the common type and the shooting-stick type now used by sports spectators. He is also credited with the invention of the swivel chair, the first of which he created and used to write much of the Declaration of Independence. 

Jefferson introduced the threshing machine to the United States and was one of the first Americans to employ crop rotation. (3)

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Jefferson was a freethinker, influenced by Rousseau and a champion of religious freedom. Like many intellectuals of his era, he was a deist, replacing revelation and tradition with reason. He cut out of his Bible all supernatural elements — including the Resurrection and the Virgin Birth — because he did not accept them, though he approved of Jesus's moral philosophy. The closing words of the Gospels in Jefferson's Bible read: "There they laid Jesus and rolled a great stone to the mouth of the sepulchre and departed."

Jefferson was raised Episcopalian at a time when the Episcopal Church was the state religion in Virginia. Before the American Revolution he was a vestryman in his local church, but he later removed his name from those available to become godparents, as his Deist beliefs opposed Trinitarian theology. 

Convinced of the need to keep church and state separate, he believed unwaveringly in freedom of religion. Jefferson refused to issue a Thanksgiving proclamation and declared that there should be "a wall of separation between church and state." He wrote in his Notes on Virginia: "Millions of innocent men, women and children since the introduction of Christianity have been burned, tortured, fined and imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites."

The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was drafted by Jefferson in 1777 in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and adopted by the Virginia General Assembly on January 16, 1786. It became the basis for the establishment clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and led to freedom of religion for all Americans. It is one of only three accomplishments Jefferson instructed to be placed in his epitaph. (3)

PRESIDENCY Thomas Jefferson's path to the presidency began with one of those constitutional mishaps that make you wonder whether the Founding Fathers had tested their machinery before putting it into service. In the election of 1800, Jefferson and Aaron Burr each received 73 electoral votes, producing a deadlock that sent the decision to the House of Representatives. There, legislators spent seven days and 35 ballots proving that indecision can be every bit as strenuous as action. Finally, on February 17, 1801, the House cast a 36th ballot and elected Jefferson the nation's third president.

For his inauguration, Jefferson chose not to arrive in regal splendor but instead walked from his boarding house to the Capitol. This was intended to demonstrate what he called "Republican simplicity"—a refreshing concept in an age when European rulers were still rather attached to crowns, uniforms, and being carried about by other people.

As president, Jefferson presided over one of the greatest real-estate bargains in history. In 1803, he purchased the Louisiana Territory from France for 50 million francs plus the cancellation of debts worth another 18 million francs. The transaction worked out to less than three cents an acre, a price so low that even today it would seem suspicious. The deal doubled the size of the United States and remains the largest land sale ever completed.

The expansion came at a cost for Native Americans. Jefferson's administration also began developing policies that encouraged the removal of Native tribes westward into the Louisiana Territory, setting in motion a process whose consequences would echo through American history.

Jefferson's record on slavery was similarly complicated. He signed the 1807 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, ending the legal importation of enslaved people into the United States. Yet he refused to recognize Haiti after its successful slave revolution and supported trade restrictions intended to isolate the new nation. The prospect of enslaved people successfully overthrowing their masters was, from the perspective of many American slaveholders, precisely the sort of precedent they preferred not to advertise.

The federal government was also astonishingly small by modern standards. Jefferson had just one clerk and one messenger to assist him, and because Congress had not yet seen fit to fund presidential staff, he paid both men himself. Today, a White House intern probably receives more administrative support than the President of the United States did in 1801.

Jefferson nevertheless found time for home improvements. He expanded the White House by adding the colonnades that still connect the residence to what would later become the East and West Wings. Their original purpose was not grandeur but concealment: they were designed to hide stables, storage areas, and other practical necessities that might spoil the view. He also opened the White House to public tours, establishing a tradition that has endured ever since except during periods when the nation found itself occupied with the business of war. 

Jefferson carried his preference for simplicity into the White House. He disliked grand titles and preferred to be addressed as "Mr. Jefferson" rather than "Mr. President," a modesty that was easier to maintain in an era when the federal government consisted of roughly the number of people now employed to manage a medium-sized airport gift shop.

His dinner parties were conducted with similar care. Jefferson limited gatherings to about 14 guests, having concluded that this was the largest number that could comfortably sustain a single conversation. The goal was to ensure that everyone could participate without being stranded at the far end of the table discussing the weather with a distant cousin of someone's brother-in-law. At a time when formal dinners often fragmented into competing conversations, Jefferson preferred a more democratic arrangement.

POLITICS Between 1791 and 1793, Jefferson co-founded the Democratic-Republican Party with James Madison to oppose the Federalist Party led by Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. The party came to power in 1800 and dominated national and state affairs until the 1820s when it faded away.

Jefferson and George Washington had a poor relationship. Their enmity stemmed from the last year of Washington's second term, when Washington suspected Jefferson of being responsible for scurrilous press attacks on him. Jefferson denied responsibility and Washington accepted his word, but a chill remained between them. Jefferson chose not to attend ceremonies marking Washington's death in 1799 and wrote no note of condolence to Washington's widow.

Jefferson resigned as Secretary of State in 1793 in protest at Hamilton's attempts to centralize government and what he regarded as Hamilton's financial impropriety. He retired to his Virginia farm for the next four years. (4)

SCANDAL Jefferson's presidency was dogged by persistent allegations that he slept with enslaved women. On October 19, 1796, the Gazette published an article accusing him of carrying on an affair with his enslaved chambermaid, Sarah "Sally" Hemings, noting they had "heard the same subject freely spoken of in Virginia, and by Virginia Gentlemen." Jefferson himself never publicly denied the allegation. DNA evidence published in 1998 strongly supported the conclusion that Jefferson fathered at least one of Hemings's children. (4)

Thomas Jefferson, who wrote that "all men are created equal," enslaved over 600 people across his lifetime, freed only five during his lifetime, and retreated from his early calls for gradual emancipation under pressure from Virginia's planter class — with the remaining enslaved people at Monticello auctioned off after his death to pay his debts. 

MILITARY RECORD As Governor of Virginia during the Revolutionary War (1779–1781), Jefferson faced severe criticism for his handling of British raids on Virginia, including the near-capture of himself and the state legislature by British cavalry under Banastre Tarleton in 1781. A subsequent legislative inquiry was initiated but ultimately dropped, and Jefferson was exonerated. (2)

As US Minister to France between 1785 and 1789, he was present in Paris during the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, and sent detailed eyewitness accounts back to John Jay, the US Secretary of Foreign Affairs. Jefferson was deeply sympathetic to the revolutionary cause, though he deplored the violence even before the full horrors of the Reign of Terror became apparent. He left France in September 1789, before the Revolution descended into its bloodiest phase. (7)

As President, Jefferson was determined to keep the United States out of the Napoleonic Wars and laid out seven formal principles of neutrality before Congress, thanking Providence for keeping America from "hastily entering into the sanguinary contest." However, his attempts to enforce neutrality led to serious problems. When both Britain and France began seizing American merchant ships, Jefferson passed the Embargo Act of 1807, banning all trade with Europe. This proved catastrophic — it devastated the American economy, particularly the mercantile Northeast, and was widely regarded as a failure. Jefferson was forced to back down in the last months of his presidency. The trade tensions he left unresolved ultimately helped propel the United States into the War of 1812 under his successor, James Madison. (8)

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS Jefferson was a chronic migraine sufferer. His migraines lasted about a month at a time and recurred roughly every seven years. Each time, he carried on working through the pain. 

Jefferson's health began to deteriorate in July 1825, from a combination of various illnesses and conditions, probably including toxemia, uremia, and pneumonia. By June of the following year he was confined to bed. (3)

HOMES In February 1770, his family house at Shadwell, Virginia burnt down, destroying his library, legal papers, and notes. 

A skilled architect, interior designer, builder, and furniture maker, Jefferson designed his 35-room replacement home at Monticello. Monticello had only two very narrow staircases, as Jefferson considered them a waste of space. 

Among the mechanical contrivances at Monticello was an interior weather vane connected to one on the roof. In its 13 bedrooms, all the beds were simply mattress supports hung on wall hooks. In his study, Jefferson had a revolving chair that enabled him to reach both a desk and a reading stand, and a chaise longue fitted with candlestick holders in both arms to provide light for reading. 

Monticello in 2013 by Martin Falbisoner -

On March 17, 1801, Jefferson moved to the White House as the third American President. Jefferson permitted regular public tours of the executive mansion, initiating a tradition that has continued ever since, except during wartime. (3)

Jefferson used a round table at both the White House and Monticello precisely so that no one sat at its head, eliminating any visible hierarchy among his guests. He deliberately seated his guests "pell-mell" — without assigned seats based on social or diplomatic rank — as a conscious rejection of the formal European court customs he had observed and despised during his time in France. (9)

TRAVEL In 1784, Jefferson departed Boston on July 5, taking his young daughter Patsy and two servants, to join Benjamin Franklin and John Adams in Europe as minister for negotiating commercial trade agreements. During his ambassadorship to France in the 1780s, he made several tours of European wine regions. He returned to the United States in September 1789. (2)

DEATH Jefferson was determined to survive until the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. At 12:45 pm on July 4, 1826, he mumbled "This is the fourth?" When he realized it was indeed the Fourth of July, he murmured "I resign my spirit to God, my daughter to my country," and died peacefully. Remarkably, the second President, John Adams, died a few hours later on the same day. Jefferson's remains were buried at Monticello.

Thomas Jefferson took care before he died to write out the inscription for his own tombstone. It listed his great accomplishments — "author of the Declaration of Independence," author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and founder of the University of Virginia — but conspicuously omitted the fact that he had once been President of the United States. (4)

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA  The Jefferson Memorial, a neoclassical monument in Washington, D.C., was dedicated on April 13, 1943, on the 200th anniversary of Jefferson's birth. Situated in West Potomac Park at the southern end of the National Mall, the building is modeled after the Pantheon in Rome and features a 19-foot bronze statue of Jefferson inside. (10)

Jefferson has been portrayed in numerous films and television productions, most notably by Ken Howard in the 1972 Broadway musical 1776 and its 1972 film adaptation, and by Nick Nolte in the 1995 television film Jefferson in Paris. 

He appears on the U.S. nickel and the two-dollar bill. 

ACHIEVEMENTS Principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776)

As chairman of the Currency Committee (1783), devised the dollar and cents system still used in the United States

Served as the first Secretary of State (1790–1793)

Co-founded the Democratic-Republican Party (1791–1793) with James Madison

Completed the Louisiana Purchase as President, doubling the size of the United States

Drafted and signed the 1807 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves

Authored the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1777), the basis for the First Amendment's establishment clause

Co-founded the University of Virginia (1819)

Assembled the personal library that became the nucleus of the Library of Congress (6,500 volumes purchased by Congress in 1815)

Credited with inventing the swivel chair, the folding chair, and the lever-operated double door opener

Introduced ice cream, french fries, waffles, and pasta-making to wider American audiences

Conducted one of the earliest scientific archaeological excavations in American history

Sources: (1) Wikipedia: Thomas Jefferson (2) Monticello.org: Thomas Jefferson (3) Encyclopaedia of Trivia (4) The White House: Thomas Jefferson (5) Food For Thought by Ed Pearce (6) University of Chicago Press — Founders' Constitution: Jefferson to John Norvell, June 11, 1807 (7) Revolution (8) State Of The Union History (9) American Essence (10) National Park Service: Thomas Jefferson Memorial

King James II of England

NAME James II of England and Ireland (James VII of Scotland).

WHAT FAMOUS FOR He was the last Catholic monarch to reign over England, Scotland, and Ireland. His attempts to establish religious liberty for his fellow Catholics and Protestant nonconformists ultimately backfired, leading to his deposition during the Glorious Revolution of 1688. His overthrow established the principle that Parliamentary sovereignty, rather than divine right, governed the British monarchy.

BIRTH James was born on October 14, 1633 (Old Style), at St. James's Palace, Westminster, London. He was baptised by William Laud, the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, shortly after birth. (1) 

FAMILY BACKGROUND James was the second surviving son of King Charles I of England and his French queen, Henrietta Maria of France, a Catholic princess and daughter of King Henry IV of France. He was named after his grandfather James I of England. He was the younger brother of King Charles II, who preceded him on the throne. (2) 

At birth he was created Duke of York and invested with the Order of the Garter in 1642. 

James with his father, Charles I, by Sir Peter Lely, 1647

CHILDHOOD James was eight years old when the English Civil War broke out in 1642. He and his brother Charles were present at the Battle of Edgehill in October of that year and narrowly escaped capture by Parliamentarian cavalry. 

He spent much of the next four years in the Royalist wartime capital of Oxford, where he was made a Master of Arts by the University on November 1, 1642, and served as colonel of a volunteer regiment of foot. 

After Royalist Oxford surrendered in June 1646, James was taken to London and held at St. James's Palace with his younger siblings. In April 1648, on his father's orders, he managed to escape his guards and cross the North Sea to The Hague, in the care of his sister Mary and her husband, William II of Orange. 

Following the execution of Charles I in January 1649, James went into exile in France with his mother. His father's fate and his years in continental exile would render him, in the view of historians, more inflexible and authoritarian in outlook than his older brother, and less patient with the complexities of English politics. (3)

EDUCATION James was educated by private tutors alongside his older brother, the future Charles II, and the two sons of the Duke of Buckingham, George and Francis Villiers. His formative education was as much military and practical as academic: his years serving in the French and Spanish armies gave him a thorough grounding in the arts of war, naval administration, and statecraft.

He was made a nominal Master of Arts by Oxford University in 1642 during the Civil War. 

CAREER RECORD 1652: He entered French military service under Marshal Turenne, fighting against the Spanish forces during the Fronde civil wars and proving himself a brave and highly capable officer. 

1656: After his brother Charles II made an alliance with Spain, James changed sides and joined the Spanish army under the Prince of Condé, commanding the rebel English royalist forces in Flanders. 

1660: Following the restoration of the monarchy, he returned to England and was appointed Lord High Admiral. He completely reorganized the Royal Navy, showing great administrative talent and personally commanding the fleet during the Second and Third Anglo-Dutch Wars. 

1673: He was forced to resign as Lord High Admiral due to the Test Act, which barred Catholics from holding public office following the public revelation of his conversion. 

1685-1688: He ascended the throne upon the death of Charles II on February 6, 1685. His brief reign was dominated by efforts to suspend penal laws against Catholics and dissenters, which alienated the political elite and resulted in his eventual deposition.

APPEARANCE  James was described as "something above middle stature, well-shaped, very nervous and strong." 

The Italian diplomat Lorenzo Magalotti, who observed him in 1667, gave a precise account: "His complexion may be called light in colour, all the outlines of his face are prominent: a square forehead, the eyes large, swollen, and deep blue, the nose curved and rather large, the lips pale and thick, and the chin rather pointed." 

Unlike his older brother Charles II, who was dark and swarthy, James had a noticeably fairer complexion, and wore a large, elaborate full-bottomed wig throughout his adult life, as seen in portraits by Sir Peter Lely and Sir Godfrey Kneller.

James was described as "something above middle stature, well-shaped, very nervous and strong." 

A 1702 anonymous account noted that "his outward carriage was a little stiff and constrained." (4) 

James II by Peter Lely

FASHION Like other Stuart monarchs, James dressed in the opulent fashion of the late 17th century, favouring rich fabrics, lace, and the full-bottomed wig that was the defining accessory of the period. Surviving portraits show him in ducal robes, armour as Lord High Admiral, and lavish court dress. (2) 

When he was depicted in his coronation robes in a full-length portrait held at the Royal Museums Greenwich, he wore a brown, full-bottomed wig with his right hand at his breast and his coronet resting on a table beside him — typical of the grandeur expected of a Stuart king. (5)

CHARACTER James was widely regarded as stubborn, hot-tempered, and inflexible — qualities that proved fatal to his reign. An anonymous account of 1702 noted that "his temper was naturally hot and choleric." (4) 

Where his brother Charles II was charming, pragmatic, and politically nimble, James was rigid, authoritarian, and unable to compromise.  His continental exile and the trauma of his father's execution had instilled in him a fierce belief in divine right and absolute monarchy that proved disastrously ill-suited to the England of his day. 

He was, however, genuinely brave in battle, and sincerely devoted to his religious faith and to those who served him loyally. Historians have debated whether he was primarily an absolutist tyrant or a sincere advocate of religious tolerance; most modern scholars take a middle ground. (3) 

SPEAKING VOICE No detailed account of James's speaking voice has survived, though his stiff and constrained public bearing suggests a formal manner of address in keeping with his character. (4) 

James was capable of direct and blunt speech: during his 1687 speaking tour of western England, he gave a notably plain-spoken speech at Chester comparing religious discrimination to imprisoning "all black men" as equally unreasonable — a remarkably direct analogy for the era. (6)

SENSE OF HUMOUR James was not noted for his wit or levity, in sharp contrast to his brother Charles II, who was famous for his easy charm and sharp humour. Where Charles cultivated his court with banter and bonhomie, James was earnest and serious. His character has been described as stiff and constrained, and contemporary accounts suggest he lacked his brother's natural gift for disarming people. 

RELATIONSHIPS James's first wife was Anne Hyde, daughter of Charles II's Lord Chancellor, Edward Hyde. She had been maid of honour to James's sister Mary. James had seduced her with promises of marriage while she was in his service, and she became pregnant in 1660. Though almost everyone at court — including Anne's own father — urged against the match, James honoured his promise. A visibly pregnant Anne married James in an official but private ceremony in London on September 3, 1660, following the Restoration. (2) 

The couple had eight children, but six died in early childhood. The two who survived to adulthood were Mary (born April 30, 1662), who later reigned as Mary II, and Anne (born February 6, 1665), who became Queen Anne, the first monarch of Great Britain. 

A portrait of Anne, James and their two daughters, Lady Mary and Lady Anne by Peter Lely

Anne Hyde died of breast cancer on March 31, 1671, aged 34, never recovering from the birth of her eighth child, Catherine, earlier that year. (1) (2)

James was also a notorious womaniser. His mistresses included Arabella Churchill, sister of the future Duke of Marlborough, and Catherine Sedley. Samuel Pepys noted drily in his diary that James "did eye my wife mightily." The sharp-tongued Bishop Gilbert Burnet memorably remarked that James's mistresses must have been "given [to] him by his priests as a penance." (7)

James married his second wife, Mary of Modena, a fifteen-year-old Italian Catholic princess, by proxy in a Catholic ceremony on September 20, 1673. Many British people, deeply distrustful of Catholicism, regarded the new Duchess of York as an agent of the Pope, and there was fierce opposition to James's potential succession to the throne. (2) 

With Mary, James had several children; most died in infancy, but the birth of a son, James Francis Edward Stuart (the "Old Pretender"), on June 10, 1688, was the event that triggered the Glorious Revolution, as it raised the prospect of a permanent Catholic dynasty. 

MONEY AND FAME After the Restoration, the office of Lord High Admiral, combined with revenues from post office and wine tariffs granted him by Charles II, gave James enough money to maintain a sizable court household. 

His position on ascending the throne was financially strong: he had standing armies of nearly 20,000 men and a revenue of around £2 million. Parliament granted him a generous life income including the proceeds of tonnage, poundage, and customs duties. (8) 

In exile, he depended entirely upon the generosity of Louis XIV of France, who provided him with a palace at Saint-Germain-en-Laye and a pension.

FOOD AND DRINK An illuminating glimpse into royal dining comes from the Lord Steward's accounts: when James II was camped at Hounslow Heath on annual military manoeuvres in 1686, he and his officers consumed twelve dishes of ice cream at £1 each — equivalent to roughly £80 (around $130) in today's money. (2) 

James II and his officers eating ice cream by Gemini

In his later years in exile, James adopted an increasingly ascetic and penitent lifestyle, in stark contrast to the luxurious court life of his earlier career. (5)

MUSIC AND ARTS James was a patron of the arts in keeping with the cultural richness of the Restoration court. He sat for numerous portraits, including works by Sir Peter Lely and Sir Godfrey Kneller, some of the most celebrated painters of the era. His portraits by Kneller and Lely now hang in major collections including the National Portrait Gallery in London and the Royal Museums Greenwich. 

The Restoration court under both Charles II and James was notable for its love of music, theatre, and spectacle, though James himself was not particularly celebrated as a personal practitioner of the arts. 

LITERATURE James left behind several significant written works, most notably his autobiography and Memoirs, compiled from his own papers (later published as Life of King James II in 1816). 

In his final years in exile, he wrote a detailed memorandum for his son advising him on how to govern England, specifying the balance of Catholic and Protestant offices to be maintained.

His papers have been drawn upon extensively by historians seeking to understand his motivations and outlook.

NATURE James was an enthusiastic huntsman in the Stuart tradition, in keeping with the culture of the Restoration court where hunting was a primary aristocratic pursuit. (9)

His time on military campaigns and at sea gave him an affinity with the outdoors and the natural world, though he is not particularly noted for scientific or botanical interests.

PETS James shared the Stuart family's celebrated passion for small toy spaniels. He and his brother Charles II had an agreement to carry on breeding their spaniels in the event of either's death, and James was described by the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Club as "an owner and great lover of small toy spaniels." 

James and toy spaniels by Perplexity

The most famous episode involving James and his dogs was the wreck of HMS Gloucester on May 6, 1682, when the ship struck a sandbank off the Norfolk coast and sank within an hour, killing between 130 and 250 people. James's critics circulated stories that he had prioritised saving his pet dogs over the drowning crew, a claim that damaged his reputation severely. However, there is evidence this was largely anti-James propaganda: his dog Mumper apparently drowned in the disaster, suggesting the story was false. The real controversy was that James's delay in leaving the ship — royal protocol forbade anyone disembarking before him — cost many lives

HOBBIES AND SPORTS James was physically active and sporty. Like his brother Charles II, he enjoyed real (or royal) tennis, one of the most fashionable sports at the Restoration court. (9) 

His primary passion was the sea and naval affairs: he threw himself into the administration and command of the Royal Navy with genuine enthusiasm and was described by Samuel Pepys — who worked closely with him — as a diligent and capable administrator. (5)

In his years in Scotland he took a keen interest in horse racing on Leith Sands.

SCIENCE AND MATHS James had a practical, empirical interest in navigation, cartography, and naval technology, as befitted a man who commanded fleets in two wars. He was a fellow investor and active participant in several commercial enterprises, including the Royal African Company and the Hudson's Bay Company, which required a grasp of trade, geography, and logistics. (

REIGN James II managed the rare historical feat of losing three kingdoms in less time than it takes most people to renovate a kitchen. He reigned as King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from February 1685 until December 1688 — not quite four years altogether — yet in that brief and rather frantic interval he helped permanently redefine the relationship between monarchy and Parliament in Britain. It was one of those reigns that began with every appearance of stability and ended with the political equivalent of a piano falling through the ceiling.

When James came to the throne, he inherited a remarkably strong position. He had nearly 20,000 soldiers spread across his kingdoms, annual revenues of about £2 million, and — perhaps most importantly — a population exhausted by decades of civil wars, plots, panics, and religious hysteria. People wanted calm. James, at first glance, looked reassuringly solid, like a man who owned several hunting dogs and knew how to discipline servants with a glance.

His Catholicism was well known and widely distrusted, but most English subjects comforted themselves with the thought that it was only a temporary inconvenience. His heirs were his Protestant daughters, Mary and Anne, so England could simply endure a Catholic king for a while and then return to normal, much as one waits out a leaking roof.

His first challenge came almost immediately when the Duke of Monmouth — the illegitimate son of Charles II and a man with the unfortunate confidence common to handsome rebels — landed in the West Country and declared himself king. The rebellion ended at the Battle of Sedgemoor in July 1685, the last pitched battle ever fought on English soil. Monmouth was captured, executed, and followed into oblivion by hundreds of supporters after Judge Jeffreys conducted the infamous “Bloody Assizes,” a judicial tour notable for combining legal procedure with the atmosphere of a public hanging festival. Around 250 rebels were executed and many hundreds more transported overseas.

The crushing of Monmouth’s rebellion convinced James of something disastrously wrong: namely, that the nation supported him wholeheartedly. This is a recurring problem in history. A ruler survives one crisis and immediately concludes he is a genius.

James interpreted his smooth accession and military success as permission to advance Catholic interests aggressively. He expanded the standing army and appointed Catholic officers in defiance of existing law, alarming Parliament, which already regarded standing armies with the same affection normally reserved for outbreaks of plague.

When Parliament objected, James simply prorogued it in November 1685 and never called it back again. This was bold in the manner of a man sawing through the branch on which he is sitting.

He proceeded to appoint Catholics to important offices throughout government, the military, and universities, overriding statutes at Oxford and Cambridge with cheerful disregard. In 1687 he issued the Declaration of Indulgence, suspending penal laws against Catholics and Protestant dissenters alike by royal prerogative. The idea of religious toleration was not itself unpopular; the problem was that James insisted on achieving it by behaving as though laws were optional suggestions.

Then came the affair of the Seven Bishops. When several Anglican bishops politely petitioned the king to reconsider forcing clergy to read the Declaration from their pulpits, James had them prosecuted for seditious libel. The bishops were acquitted to scenes of public jubilation so widespread that it became painfully obvious the king had managed the remarkable feat of alienating both religious extremists and moderates simultaneously.

For a while, many Englishmen still assumed matters would sort themselves out upon James’s death. Then, on June 10, 1688, Queen Mary of Modena gave birth to a son.

This changed everything.

A Catholic male heir meant that England now faced not a temporary Catholic monarch but the prospect of an enduring Catholic dynasty. Panic spread with astonishing efficiency. Within weeks, seven prominent politicians — Whigs and Tories together, proving that terror can achieve bipartisanship where reason cannot — secretly invited William of Orange to invade.

William landed at Devon on November 5, 1688. James still possessed a large army, but armies are only useful if they remain loyal, and his began evaporating with extraordinary speed. Commanders defected. Noblemen defected. Even James’s own son-in-law defected. It was less a military collapse than a prolonged public unfriending.

James himself appeared to suffer a complete emotional unraveling. He endured severe nosebleeds, bouts of indecision, and periods of paralysis that suggest a man watching his authority dissolve hour by hour. Finally, on December 23, 1688, he fled to France. Parliament obligingly interpreted his departure as an abdication and invited William and Mary to rule jointly in February 1689.

Thus ended one of the shortest and most consequential reigns in British history.

James was not quite finished. With French backing from Louis XIV, he landed in Ireland in 1689 in a final attempt to recover his throne. The Irish Parliament declared him the rightful king, and for a moment it looked as though the struggle might become a genuine European crisis.

Instead, it culminated at the Battle of the Boyne in July 1690, where William III decisively defeated James’s forces. James promptly fled back to France

He spent the remaining eleven years of his life at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye as the pensioned guest of Louis XIV, growing steadily more devout and penitential, which is often what happens to deposed monarchs once they run out of armies.

James II failed as a king, but in doing so he transformed Britain permanently. His overthrow produced the Bill of Rights in 1689, which sharply limited royal authority and established Parliament as the dominant force in government. The Act of Settlement of 1701 barred Catholics from the throne, a provision whose echoes survive even now in the constitutional machinery of Britain.

In effect, James accomplished by failure what many rulers could not accomplish by skill: he convinced the British political class that monarchy needed rules, limits, and supervision. It was an extraordinarily influential disaster.

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Religion was arguably the single most important force in James's life. Originally raised an Anglican, he was exposed to Catholicism during his years in exile in France, and both he and his first wife Anne Hyde were drawn to the Roman Catholic faith. James converted to Catholicism and received Catholic Eucharist in 1668 or 1669, though he kept his conversion secret for years and continued attending Anglican services until 1676. His conversion only became public when he resigned the post of Lord High Admiral rather than take the Protestant oath required by the 1673 Test Act. (2) 

His Catholic faith was the central and defining fact of his reign, driving his attempts to extend toleration to Catholics and ultimately causing his downfall. He was once heard to remark: "If occasion were, I hope God would give me his grace to suffer death for the true Catholic religion as well as banishment." (7)

In exile, he became ever more devout, living as an austere penitent; the Archbishop of Paris even heard evidence in 1734 to support his possible canonisation, though nothing came of it. 

POLITICS  James was a firm believer in the divine right of kings and in royal absolutism, modelled in part on the example of Louis XIV of France. 

His political career was dominated by the Exclusion Crisis of 1678–1683, during which Whig politicians — led by the Earl of Shaftesbury — repeatedly attempted to bar him from the succession by Act of Parliament. This crisis gave birth to the English two-party system: those who supported James and the legitimate succession were called "Tories," while those who supported the Exclusion Bill were called "Whigs." (2) 

As king, James attempted to pack Parliament with supporters, dismissed judges who ruled against him, and issued the Declaration of Indulgence (1687) using the royal prerogative to nullify Acts of Parliament — all moves that were seen as threats to the constitutional order. His attempts to promote Catholic officers in the army, to override university statutes, and to prosecute the Seven Bishops for merely petitioning him finally turned the political nation against him. (8)

SCANDAL The greatest scandal of James's life and reign was, in Protestant eyes, his conversion to Roman Catholicism — and his determination to impose Catholic toleration on a deeply Protestant nation by royal prerogative. 

His womanising was a further source of notoriety: his string of mistresses was remarked upon throughout his life, and Bishop Burnet's cutting quip that they must have been "given [to] him by his priests as a penance" became one of the most famous put-downs of the era. (

The "warming pan scandal" of 1688 — when Protestant opponents circulated rumours that the newborn Prince of Wales had been smuggled into Queen Mary's bed in a warming pan to fake an heir — was technically a scandal aimed at him, reflecting how completely he had lost the confidence of his subjects. 

MILITARY RECORD James was, by any measure, a genuinely brave soldier and capable naval commander. He served in the French army under Marshal Turenne from 1652, fighting in multiple campaigns across the Low Countries and gaining valuable battlefield experience. He was personally commended by Turenne as a soldier who "ventures himself and chargeth gallantly where anything is to be done," and was raised to Lieutenant-General by 1654. (7)

He later served with Spanish forces at the Battle of the Dunes in 1657. 

As Lord High Admiral after the Restoration, he commanded the English fleet in person at the Battle of Lowestoft (1665) and at the Battle of Solebay (1672), displaying conspicuous personal courage in both engagements — standing firm on the deck even as men were killed beside him. He was removed from active naval command after both battles, as Charles II was unwilling to risk losing the heir to the throne. 

After becoming king he crushed the Monmouth and Argyll rebellions in 1685. 

However, his military nerve famously deserted him in 1688, when — despite having a numerically superior army — he declined to engage William of Orange's invading force, panicked, and fled to France. His subsequent campaign to reclaim his throne via Ireland ended in defeat at the Battle of the Boyne on July 1, 1690. 

Battle of the Boyne by Huchtenburg

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS   His years of military campaigning, active naval service, hunting, and tennis all point to a man who remained physically capable well into middle age. He ascended the throne at 51 and was reportedly robust. 

HOMES James was born at St. James's Palace, London, and spent his early years between royal palaces. 

During the Civil War, he was held at St. James's Palace and later spent time in Oxford. He then lived for years at The Hague and at the French court in exile. 

After the Restoration, his primary residence as Duke of York was in London. 

As Lord High Commissioner of Scotland (1679–1682) he resided at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh. 

As king from 1685, he occupied the royal palaces, including Whitehall Palace. 

After his flight in 1688, Louis XIV provided him with the magnificent royal Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, outside Paris, where he spent the last thirteen years of his life in exile. (

TRAVEL James's life was defined by movement and displacement. As a child he was shuttled between royal palaces; as a young man in exile he lived at The Hague, Paris, and with Spanish forces in Flanders. As Lord High Commissioner he travelled to Scotland. (

He visited the western counties of England on a speaking tour in 1687. 

After the Glorious Revolution, he travelled to France, then to Ireland in 1689 in his attempted reconquest, before making his final journey back to France after his defeat at the Boyne in 1690. 

DEATH James II died of a brain haemorrhage on September 16, 1701, at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye in France, aged 67. 

His death was marked by the extraordinary disposal of his remains: his heart was placed in a silver-gilt locket and given to the convent at Chaillot; his brain was placed in a lead casket and given to the Scots College in Paris; his entrails were divided between two gilt urns sent to the parish church of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and the English Jesuit college at Saint-Omer; and the flesh from his right arm was given to the English Augustinian nuns of Paris. 

The rest of his body was laid to rest in a triple sarcophagus (consisting of two wooden coffins and one of lead) at the Chapel of Saint Edmund in the Church of the English Benedictines, Rue Saint-Jacques, Paris, with a funeral oration delivered by Henri-Emmanuel de Roquette. Lights were kept burning around his coffin until the French Revolution, when his tomb was raided.

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA  James II has appeared as a prominent character in numerous historical dramas focusing on the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution. He is portrayed in the 2003 BBC miniseries Charles II: The Power and the Passion (played by Charlie Creed-Miles) and features prominently in historical novels by authors such as Neal Stephenson in his Baroque Cycle series

James II appears in John Dryden's political allegory Absalom and Achitophel (1681), in which he appears thinly veiled as the Duke of York. 

ACHIEVEMENTS Despite the ultimately catastrophic nature of his reign, James's career contained genuine achievements: 

As Lord High Admiral, he oversaw a major rebuilding and reorganisation of the Royal Navy, earning the admiration of Samuel Pepys, and commanded fleets with personal bravery in two Dutch wars.

He expanded England's colonial reach, leaving a permanent legacy when the captured Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam was renamed "New York" in his honor as the Duke of York. 

He is credited by some historians as a genuine early advocate of religious toleration — his Declaration of Indulgence extended protections to Protestant dissenters as well as Catholics.

His deposition, paradoxically, was his most enduring contribution to history: the Glorious Revolution permanently established parliamentary supremacy, produced the Bill of Rights (1689), and set Britain on the path to constitutional monarchy.

His daughters Mary II and Anne both reigned as Queens regnant — an unusual dynastic legacy — and Queen Anne became the first monarch of Great Britain following the Acts of Union in 1707.

Sources: (1) Wikipedia — James II of England (2) Encyclopaedia of Trivia — James II of England (3) Encyclopedia Virginia — James II (1633–1701) (4) National Portrait Gallery — Later Stuart Portraits Catalogue (5) Royal Museums Greenwich — James II Portrait (6) Sowerby, Scott. *Making Toleration: The Repealers and the Glorious Revolution*. Harvard University Press, 2013. (7) Miller, John. *James II*. Yale University Press (The English Monarchs Series), 2000. (8) The Royal Family — James II (9) Pleasure and Pastime: Leisure at the Court of Charles II