
Mary of Modena (5 October 1658 – 7 May 1718) was Queen consort of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 6 February 1685 to 11 December 1688 as the wife of King James II of England.
Biography[]
Maria Beatrice d'Este was born in Modena, Duchy of Modena and Reggio in 1658, the daughter of Duke Alfonso IV of Modena and the sister of Francesco II. She married the widower James, Duke of York (the future James II of England) in 1673 at the age of 15; her husband was 39. While she initially disliked her husband, she soon warmed to him and gave birth to James Francis Edward Stuart, the future "Old Pretender." As a result of the birth of a Catholic heir to the throne of England, James II was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and Mary went into exile in France with her husband and children. She was popular among King Louis XIV's courtiers, and, after her husband's death, she frequented a convent and served as regent to her son James III during his reign as the Jacobite pretender to the English throne. She remained in France even after her son was exiled from France in 1713 on the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, and she died at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1718.