MARY II (1662–1694), queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland, eldest child of James, duke of York [q. v.], and his first duchess, Anne Hyde [q. v.], was born at St. James's Palace 30 April 1662. Her birth, by reason of her sex, 'pleased nobody ' (Pepys, Diary, i. 442), and lost such significance as it possessed by the birth, fifteen months later,of her eldest brother. When she was two years of age, Pepys (ib. ill. 44) saw the Duke of York playing with her 'like an ordinary private father;' and he saw her again, when close upon six, 'a little child in hanging sleeves, dance most finely, so as almost to ravish one; her ears were so good' (ib. vi. 43). Her early days were partly spent in the house of her grandfather Clarendon at Twickenham; but she and the duke's other children were afterwards established at Richmond Palace, under the care of their governess, Lady Frances Villiers, whose daughters, together with Anne Trelawney and Sarah Jennings, were among the play-fellows of the young princesses. The Duke of York was constrained to have his daughters brought up as protestants by the fear of their being taken away from him altogether (Life of James II, i. 503). A kind of general superintendence seems to have been exercised over their education by Morley, bishop of Winchester, who had enjoyed the chancellor Clarendon's confidence, and had considerable influence over the appointments in the Duke of York's household (Plumptre, Life of Ken, i. 128). The religious training of Mary and Anne was, however, mainly in the hands of Compton, bishop of London, who laid the foundation of Mary's sturdy protestant sentiment, and to whom she always remained warmly attached (Burnet, iii. 111–12). In the later years of her childhood Dr. Lake, afterwards archdeacon and prebendary of Exeter, and Dr. Doughty were among her chaplains (Lake, pp. 8, 24; cf. Krämer, p. 74). Her French tutor was Peter de Laine, who highly commends her abilities (Miss Strickland, x. 247); in drawing she was instructed by the dwarfs, Richard Gibson [q. v.] and his wife. Gibson afterwards accompanied her to Holland. From a French dancing-master (Pepys) she learnt an accomplishment which in 1688 she described as formerly 'one of her prettiest pleasures' (ap. Doebner, p. 5), and which in December 1674 she exhibited before the court, when she with much applause took the part of Calisto in Crowne's masque of that name. Dryden complimented the princesses in an epilogue; the masque was printed in 1675, and was dedicated to her.
The disposal of Mary's hand soon became an interesting political question. After the death of her youngest brother Edgar, duke of Cambridge (1671), she had once more become heiress-presumptive to the crown, and her father had no children by his second marriage till the birth of a daughter in 1675. It was obvious that the choice of a husband for her must prove either another link in the policy of subservience to France or a check
