BONNIE PRINCE CHARLIE - WHO WAS HE?

Born on 31 December 1720, Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Severino Maria Stuart was the grandson of King James II of Great Britain, and should have been heir to the British throne.

Should have, but wasn’t. Because the British government got rid of James II in what came to be known as the Glorious Revolution of 1688. He and his wife Mary of Modena and their baby son James Francis Edward, (Charles Edward’s father) fled to France and settled ultimately in Rome. Whereupon the British offered the throne to James II’s daughter Mary (by his first wife Anne Hyde) and her husband William of Orange, who was James’ nephew.

Why?

James II’s big crime was to convert to Catholicism. By marrying his second wife Mary who was also Catholic, sent the British establishment into panic. No-one in England wanted a return to the fanatical Catholicism of a century previously, where Mary Tudor tried to bring the Inquisition to Britain and brought in a reign of terror. Not for nothing was Mary Tudor called Bloody Mary! Hundreds were burnt at the stake during her five year reign because they refused to convert to the Catholic faith. So James’ openly becoming a Catholic and marrying a Catholic set English hearts into meltdown.

As a result, he struggled against Parliament for the whole of his four year reign. The birth of his son, James Francis further upset the English establishment. Now there could be a succession of Catholic kings! That could not be allowed to happen. While they could tolerate James’ conversion to Catholicism if he behaved himself, they could not and would not put up with a Catholic succession. So they got rid of James II in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, putting William and Mary on the throne.

In 1701, James II died and his son James Francis claimed the British throne as James III of England and Ireland, and James VIII of Scotland. Not that it mattered. The establishment had no intention of allowing him the throne, despite the fact that he had the backing of his cousin Louis XIV of France and many Jacobite supporters in Britain. Perhaps he thought that when the throne became vacant in 1702, with no offspring of William and Mary, he would be given the throne. Not so. The government had foreseen that possibility and James Francis found himself out of the picture by the Act of Settlement which prohibited any Catholic sitting on the British throne.

Instead, the throne was given to Anne, James Francis’ half sister. Inconveniently, and despite having eleven children and many miscarriages, all Anne’s children pre-deceased her and when she died in 1714, Parliament sought a protestant heir to the throne. Disregarding James Francis, and no less than fifty other people who might have had greater claim, they settled on George of Hanover, a Protestant.

George was the great grandson of King James I through his daughter, Elizabeth of Bohemia.

In 1715, James Francis, now a man of twenty-seven came to Britain and attempted to retrieve the throne in the Jacobite Rising of that year, with no success. Narrowly avoiding capture he fled back to the Continent, where he married Maria Clementina Sobieska, granddaughter of the Polish King John III of Beuburg.

They had two sons, Charles Edward Stuart, also known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, and Henry Benedict Stuart who became a Cardinal.

Understandably, both James Francis and his eldest son Charles believed the throne of Great Britain belonged to them by right. James even called himself James III of England and VIII of Scotland. With James becoming too old for the venture, Charles took up the cause, and aged twenty-four sailed for Scotland in 1745, raising an army from the clans of Scotland with a view to eventually marching on London and claiming the throne.

Charles Edward was indeed ‘bonny’. A good-looking young man, he had the ability to charm and to lead. When he arrived in Scotland the clans readily came to his call, and he had a formidable army. However, promised help from the French did not materialise. After some initial successes, his plans came to an abrupt end at the battle of Culloden in April 1746, where the government forces under the Duke of Cumberland, second son of King George II, routed the Scots in a devastating defeat.

For Charles, there was just one thing to do—flee!

And flee he did. His subsequent escape from the clutches of the British with the help of a Scottish lass is the subject of my book, Over the Sea to Skye, to be published soon.