The Old Pretender
Born in the year of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when his father James II was deposed in favour of a Protestant monarch, James Francis Stuart spent most of his upbringing on the Continent.
After his father’s death in 1701, recognised by the Catholic nations and most importantly the Papal States, he began his claim on the British monarchy.
Known as the ‘Jacobite ‘15’, uprisings occurred in that year across both Scotland and England. James himself arrived in Scotland in December, but his stay was short and had returned to France by the February of the following year.
Settling in Rome, he developed a successful pseudo-court, creating ‘Jacobite’ peerages. He married Maria Clementina Sobieska in 1719 and had two sons by her, Charles Edward Stuart and Henry Benedict Stuart, both of whom carried on the Jacobite cause.
James died in Rome in 1766, but by this time the Jacobite movement was over and Rome had acknowledged the Hanoverian King, George III as the rightful monarch of Britain.
