Stuart, Charles Edward

Stuart, Charles Edward (1720–88), the ‘Young Pretender’. Elder son of James Francis Edward Stuart, the son and heir of the exiled James II and VII, Charles was the Jacobite prince of Wales. He was born in December 1720 in Rome to James and his teenage Polish wife Clementina Sobieska. Another son, Henry Stuart, was born in 1725 to this unstable marriage. Charles was a robust and wilful child, who was nominally blooded for war by being present at the age of 13 for a few days at the siege of Gaeta.

Early in 1744 he left Italy for France carrying his father's commission as prince regent, having been summoned to accompany a proposed French invasion of England. It was cancelled. In July 1745 Charles sailed for Scotland to raise a rebellion in the Highlands, with the hope of stimulating French aid. Total self-confidence, plus a limited grasp of reality, and the outstanding generalship of Lord George Murray, carried him through a conquest of Scotland and march to Derby which made him a hero. His period of hiding after his defeat at Culloden endeared him to romantics as ‘ Bonnie Prince Charlie’. Yet he was an embarrassment to Louis XV (who was seeking peace) on his return to France, from which he had to be expelled. The rest of his life was a protracted anti-climax, full of failed relationships and alcoholism. He died in Rome in 1788.

Bruce Philip Lenman