Plan your trip to Bath

A bath and a revolution

King James II of England (James VII of Scotland) was desperate for a male heir, and his second wife, Mary of Modena, visit Bath to take the waters at the Cross Bath.

Sure enough, nine Months later she gave birth to a bouncing baby Prince James Francis Edward Stuart... and precipitated the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

See, Parliament was already wary of having a Catholic king, and was kind of waiting him out James to die since his heir apparent was his daughter Mary, married to the properly Protestant Dutch William of Orange. When James II suddenly had a son, however, Parliament's hand was forced and—long story short—the invited William to cross the channel, oust James, and set up William and Mary as co-regents.

The so-called Jacobites continued to press the Stuart clan's claims to the throne in the name of James II—then his son Prince James ("The Old Pretender"), then his grandson, Bonnie Prince Charlie—for nearly a century. The English throne, however, would eventually pass to Mary's sister Anne, and then to their cousin George I, kicking off the Georgian era under the house of Hanover.