This painting identifies King James II in his role as head of the Army. He wears a General Officer’s State coat, and the lines of troops in the distance refer to his annual review of the Army on Hounslow Heath, outside London. James II’s brief reign from 1685 to 1688 witnessed a considerable growth in the English Standing Army. As a Roman Catholic, James preferred his regiments to be officered wherever possible by fellow Catholics. He also relied on a number of Protestant career-soldiers, but a key group of these, objecting to the King’s attempts to Catholicise the Army, invited William of Orange, husband of James’s Protestant daughter Princess Mary, to assume the throne. In 1688 William secured an almost bloodless victory in England through the defection of troops to his cause, though there was bitter fighting in Ireland and Scotland.