 He was the son of King James II of England and Ireland (VII of Scotland) and his Roman Catholic second wife, Mary of Modena, and, as such, was automatically Duke of Cornwall and Duke of Rothesay, among other titles.The prince's birth was controversial and, coming five years after his mother's last pregnancy, unanticipated on the part of a number of British Protestants, who had expected his sister Mary, from his father's first marriage, to succeed their father.Mary and her younger sister Princess Anne had been raised as Protestants.