Excerpt from The Highland Scots of North Carolina The hostile response of the English and Scottish peoples to these political and religious policies produced some of the most important events in their history. The actions of James I and Charles I stirred up a storm of protest in both England and Scotland. Civil War finally erupted during the reign of Charles 1. Charles was executed by the Puritan victors who then ruled England from 1649 to 1660. In 1660 the crown was restored to Charles II. His Catholic brother, james II, ascended the throne at Charles' death in 1685. James II was a blunt, relentless man who pursued his political and religious policies with such harshness that he soon alienated the members of the English and Scottish Parliaments, the Anglicans, and the Calvinists. In view of his advancing age and the Protestantism of the grown daughters who would succeed him, no attempt was made to depose James II until his bride gave birth to a son in 1688. This brought forth the threat of another Catholic king and triggered the Glorious Revolution of 1688. A coalition of political leaders advised James to leave the country and in vited James's daughter Mary and her husband William to become the joint monarchs of England and Scotland. Un willing to lose his head to the executioner's ax as his father had, James ?ed to France. After the reigns of William and Mary, and Queen Anne, their German nephew, the Elector of Hanover, became King George I of Great Britain in 1714.