Alt-history: Legitimate Monmouth, no Glorious Revolution

By Monmouth, I'm talking about the 1st Duke of Monmouth, aka James Scott, aka the oldest bastard of England and Scotland's (no UK then, remember!) King Charles II.

I was inspired to this by a book I just read on Stuart England (again, just England, so doesn't start until 1603, and ends 1689, with William fully grasping the kingship).

The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689 by Jonathan Healey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A little bit dense, but not unduly so, and informative throughout. For me, it was most so on the period from the Second Civil War of 1648 through the end of the Protectorate.

I had not realized how, in 1648, much of Parliament was still willing to treat with Charles and on lenient terms.

On the Protectorate, I knew the basics: Rump Parliament, Charles' execution, Cromwell off to Ireland to become a four-letter word, Cromwell scuffing with various Parliaments, then son Richard unable to hold power. But the details of the different Parliamentary arrangements at different times in the Protectorate? How Cromwell was often more Independent, less Puritan, on the degree of religious tolerance he was ready to show? That and more was new.

So were some of the fine details of William vis a vis James II/VII. And, that should be enough without spoiling anything.

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The biggie against legitimizing him is that Charles never married Lucy Walter, thogh Monmouth pushed claims there had been a secret marriage on his father's deathbed, shortly before proclaiming the standard of revolt against his uncle, James II/VII, and claiming the kingship shortly thereafter.

Two questions, with some background first.

First, Charles had earlier sent his brother into exile, when, several years after the Treaty of Dover, Charles' new kindness to Catholics got enough backlash by James trying to push it more than Charles, that Charles sent him out of the country for his own safety if nothing else. A few years after that, when Charles was in a severe illness that looked like it might cause long term incapacitation, or even be fatal, James returned from the Continent without authorization. And made a muck of things while trying to run a quasi-regency. When Charles recovered, both over the muck and over James not asking permission to return first, he exiled him again. This is all tied to the Exclusion Crisis earlier, and the Test Act and the Popish Plot, which is when James was sent abroad.

Did Charles think at that point about making a claim to secret marriage? Walter was dead and couldn't deny it, and Charles had long ago basically told Queen Maria Braganza straight up that his mistresses came first. The only other thing Charles needed was a priest who would have been with him at this time of exile and willing to perjure himself by swearing he'd performed the marriage.

Option B? Could Charles have made a deal with Parliament to legitimize Monmouth anyway? (Some other countries allows such legitimization, or, in the case of Tsarist Russia, asked fewer questions about bloodlines.) Parliament probably would have attached several conditions, such as further expanding the Test Act. With that, I think it would have been possible.

This would have avoided the whole Glorious Revolution, for better and for worse.

Monmouth had legitimate issue, and his eldest son, 1st Earl Dalkeith, also did.

That said, there were others to oppose this, starting with Dutch Stadtholder William and wife Mary, who stood to be the biggest losers.

Would Parliament become more quasi-democratic more quickly, or more slowly, is one question.

And, without the later Hanoverian succession, would the United Kingdom (I assume that still happens, in part for part of the reasons it did in reality, for island unity against the Yorkists) gotten less entangled in Continental affairs?