Charlotte Stuart, styled Duchess of AlbanyShe was given the title in 1783 by her father,

Charles Edward Stuart Charles Edward Louis John Sylvester Maria Casimir Stuart (20 December 1720 – 30 January 1788) was the elder son of James Francis Edward Stuart, grandson of James II and VII, and the Stuart claimant to the thrones of England, Scotland and ...

, who claimed to be able to grant

Scottish peerages The Peerage of Scotland ( gd, Moraireachd na h-Alba, sco, Peerage o Scotland) is one of the five divisions of peerages in the United Kingdom and for those peers created by the King of Scots before 1707. Following that year's Treaty of Unio ...

by virtue of being ''de jure'' King of Scots. Neither that claim, nor the title itself, were ever recognised by the British State. Her title was recognised by

Pope Pius VI Pope Pius VI ( it, Pio VI; born Count Giovanni Angelo Braschi, 25 December 171729 August 1799) was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 15 February 1775 to his death in August 1799. Pius VI condemned the French Revoluti ...

, but not, unlike other Jacobite peers, by Louis XVI of France or

Leopold I, Grand Duke of Tuscany Leopold II (Peter Leopold Josef Anton Joachim Pius Gotthard; 5 May 1747 – 1 March 1792) was Holy Roman Emperor, King of Hungary and King of Bohemia, Bohemia, and List of rulers of Austria, Archduke of Austria from 1790 to 1792, and List of rule ...

. Source: Pittock, Murray G. H. (September 2004; online edn, May 2006
"Charles Edward (1720–1788)"
''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, , retrieved 14 December 2007 (subscription required) (29 October 1753 – 17 November 1789) was the illegitimate daughter of the

Jacobite Jacobite means follower of Jacob or James. Jacobite may refer to: Religion * Jacobites, followers of Saint Jacob Baradaeus (died 578). Churches in the Jacobite tradition and sometimes called Jacobite include: ** Syriac Orthodox Church, sometimes ...

pretender Prince Charles Edward Stuart ("Bonnie Prince Charlie" or the "Young Pretender") and his only child to survive infancy. Her mother was Clementina Walkinshaw, who was mistress to the Prince from 1752 until 1760. After years of abuse, Clementina left him, taking Charlotte with her. Charlotte spent most of her life in French convents, estranged from a father who refused to make any provision for her. Unable to marry, she herself became a mistress with illegitimate children, taking Ferdinand de Rohan, Archbishop of Bordeaux, as her lover. She was finally reconciled with her father in 1784, when he legitimised her and created her Duchess of Albany in the Jacobite Peerage. She left her children with her mother, and became her father's carer and companion in the last years of his life, before dying less than two years after him. Her three children were raised in anonymity; however, as Prince Charles Stuart's only grandchildren, they have been the subject of Jacobite interest since their lineage was uncovered in the 20th century.

Royal parentage

Charlotte Stuart was born on 29 October 1753 at

Liège Liège ( , , ; wa, Lîdje ; nl, Luik ; german: Lüttich ) is a major city and municipality of Wallonia and the capital of the Belgian province of Liège. The city is situated in the valley of the Meuse, in the east of Belgium, not far from b ...

to Charles and his mistress Clementina Walkinshaw. Charles and Clementina had met during the Jacobite rising of 1745, when he came to Scotland from France in an attempt to regain by force the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland, which had been lost by his grandfather,

James II and VII James VII and II (14 October 1633 16 September 1701) was King of England and King of Ireland as James II, and King of Scotland as James VII from the death of his elder brother, Charles II, on 6 February 1685. He was deposed in the Glorious Re ...

in 1689. Clementina was the youngest of the ten daughters of John Walkinshaw of Barrowhill. The Walkinshaws owned the lands of Barrowfield and Camlachie, and her father had become a wealthy Glasgow merchant (founding the textile village of Calton). However, he was also an Episcopalian Protestant and a Jacobite who had fought for the Prince's father in the rising of 1715, been captured at the Battle of Sheriffmuir, before escaping from

Stirling Castle Stirling Castle, located in Stirling, is one of the largest and most important castles in Scotland, both historically and architecturally. The castle sits atop Castle Hill, an intrusive crag, which forms part of the Stirling Sill geological ...

and fleeing to continental Europe. In 1717, he had been

pardoned A pardon is a government decision to allow a person to be relieved of some or all of the legal consequences resulting from a criminal conviction. A pardon may be granted before or after conviction for the crime, depending on the laws of the ju ...

by the British Government and returned to Glasgow, where his youngest daughter was born probably at Camlachie. However, Clementina was largely educated on the Continent, and later converted to

Roman Catholicism The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwide . It is am ...

. In 1746, she was living at the home of her uncle Sir Hugh Paterson at Bannockburn, near Stirling. The Prince came to Sir Hugh's home in early January 1746 where he first met Clementina and he returned later that month to be nursed by her from what appears to have been a cold. Given that she was living under her uncle's protection, it is not thought the two were lovers at this time. After the defeat of the Prince's rebellion at Culloden in April 1746, Charles fled Scotland for France. In the following years, he had a scandalous affair with his 22-year-old first cousin Louise de Montbazon (who was married to his close friend, and whom he deserted when she became pregnant) and then with the Princess of Talmont, who was in her 40s. In 1752, he heard that Clementina was at

Dunkirk Dunkirk (french: Dunkerque ; vls, label=French Flemish, Duunkerke; nl, Duinkerke(n) ; , ;) is a commune in the department of Nord in northern France.louis d'ors to help her and then dispatched Sir Henry Goring to entreat her to come to Ghent and live with him as his mistress. Goring, who described Clementina as a "bad woman", complained of being used as "no better than a pimp", and shortly after left Charles's employ. However, by November 1752, Clementina was living with Charles and was to remain as his mistress for the following eight years. The couple moved to Liège where Charlotte, their only child, was born on 29 October 1753 and baptised into the Roman Catholic faith at the church of Notre Dame-des-Fonts in

.Douglas, Hugh (2004
"Walkinshaw, Clementine, styled countess of Albestroff (c.1720–1802)"
''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, , retrieved 14 December 2007 (subscription required)

Separation from father (1760–1783)

The relationship between the prince and Charlotte's mother was disastrous. Charles was already a disillusioned, angry alcoholic when they began living together, and he became violent towards and insanely possessive of Clementina, treating her as a "submissive whipping post". Often away from home on "jaunts", he seldom referred to his daughter, and when he did, it was as "ye cheild". During a temporary move to Paris, the Prince's lieutenants record ugly public arguments between the two and that his drunkenness and temper were damaging his reputation. By 1760, they were in Basel, and Clementina had had enough of Charles's intoxication and their nomadic lifestyle. She contacted his staunchly Roman Catholic father, James Stuart, and expressed a desire to secure a Catholic education for Charlotte, and to retire to a convent. James agreed to pay her an annuity of 10,000 livres and, in July 1760, there is evidence to suggest he aided her escape from the watchful Charles, with the seven-year-old Charlotte, to the convent of the Nuns of the Visitation in Paris. She left a letter for Charles expressing her devotion to him but complaining she had to flee in fear of her life. A furious Charles circulated descriptions of them both, but it was to no avail.

Appeals from France

For the next twelve years, Clementina and Charlotte continued to live in various French convents, supported by the 10,000 livre pension granted by James Stuart. Charles never forgave Clementina for depriving him of "ye cheild", and stubbornly refused to pay anything for their support. On 1 January 1766 James died, but Charles, now considering himself ''de jure'' Charles III of Scotland, England and Ireland, still refused to make any provision for the two, forcing Clementina, now styling herself Countess Alberstroff, to appeal to his brother Cardinal Henry Stuart for assistance. Henry gave them an allowance of 5,000 livres, but in return extracted a statement from Clementina that she had never been married to Charles – a statement she later tried to retract. In 1772, the Prince, then aged fifty-one, married the nineteen-year-old Princess Louise of Stolberg-Gedern, who was only a year older than Charlotte. Charlotte, now in penury, had consistently been writing to her father for some time, and she now desperately entreated him to legitimise her, provide support and bring her to Rome before an heir could be born. In April 1772, Charlotte wrote a touching, yet pleading, letter to "mon Auguste Papa" which was sent via Principal Gordon of the Scots College in Rome. Charles relented and offered to bring Charlotte to Rome—he was now resident in the Palazzo Muti, the residence of the Stuarts-in-exile—but only on condition she would leave her mother behind in France. This she loyally refused to do, and Charles, in fury, broke off all discussions.

Mistress of an Archbishop

Towards the end of 1772, Clementina and Charlotte unexpectedly arrived in Rome to press their desperate cause in person. However, the Prince reacted angrily, refusing even to see them, forcing their helpless return to France, from where Charlotte's pleading letters continued. Three years later, Charlotte, now in her twenty-second year was in poor health. She was apparently suffering from a liver ailment shared by the Stuarts and decided her only option was to marry as soon as possible. Charles, however, refused to give permission either for her to marry or to take the veil, and she was left awaiting his royal pleasure. Lacking legitimacy or permission, Charlotte was unable to marry. Therefore she sought a protector and provider. Probably unbeknown to Charles, she became the mistress of Ferdinand Maximilien Mériadec de Rohan, Archbishop of Bordeaux and Cambrai. Ferdinand de Rohan – related by blood to the house of Stuart as well as Bourbon and Lorraine – was also unable to marry legitimately, having entered the Church as a younger son of a noble house. By him, she had three children: two daughters, Marie Victoire and Charlotte, and finally a son, Charles Edward. Her children were kept secret and remained largely unknown until the 20th century. When Charlotte eventually left France for Florence, she entrusted her children, and she was only just recovering from her son's birth, to the care of her mother, and it appears that few, and certainly not her father, knew of their existence.

Reconciliation with her father

Only after his childless marriage to Louise was over, and Charles had fallen seriously ill, did he take an interest in Charlotte. She was now thirty and she had not seen her father since she was seven. On 23 March 1783, he altered his will to make her his heir and, a week later, signed an act of legitimisation. This act, recognising her as his natural daughter and entitling her to succeed to his private estate, was sent to Louis XVI of France. Henry Stuart, however, contested the legitimisation as being irregular and confusing to the succession. Louis XVI eventually did confirm the act and register it with the Parlement of Paris, but not until 6 September 1787. In July 1784, having granted his wife Louise a

legal separation Legal separation (sometimes judicial separation, separate maintenance, divorce ', or divorce from bed-and-board) is a legal process by which a married couple may formalize a separation while remaining legally married. A legal separation is gra ...

, Charles wrote to his daughter calling her "ma chére fille". In his letter, he summoned Charlotte to Florence, where he was now resident. She arrived in Florence on 5 October 1784. In November, he installed her in the Palazzo Guadagni as Duchess of Albany, styling her "Her Royal Highness". Nevertheless, being illegitimate at birth, Charlotte still had no right of succession to the Stuart claim to the British throne. However, by this stage, the claims were of little value. European rulers had long since ceased to take Charles seriously. Even

was refusing to recognise his royal title, and the famous Casanova had wittily called him the "pretender-in-vain". He was reduced to styling himself the Count d'Albany. That a Stuart restoration was now less than unlikely did not prevent the Prince presenting Charlotte as the next generation of the cause. On 30 November 1784, Charles held a 'State' banquet for Charlotte and invested her with the

Order of the Thistle The Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle is an order of chivalry associated with Scotland. The current version of the Order was founded in 1687 by King James VII of Scotland, who asserted that he was reviving an earlier Order. The ...

. He had medals struck for her, bearing the figure of Hope, the map of England, and the Stuart arms with legends such as ''"Spes Tamen Est Una"'' ("there is one hope"). He also had her idealised in art; the Scottish artist

Gavin Hamilton Gavin Hamilton may refer to: * Gavin Hamilton (archbishop of St Andrews) (died 1571), archbishop of St Andrews * Gavin Hamilton (bishop of Galloway) (1561–1612), bishop of Galloway * Gavin Hamilton (artist) (1723–1798), Scottish artist * Gavin ...

was commissioned to draw her in chalk in the neo-classical style, whilst

Hugh Douglas Hamilton Hugh Douglas Hamilton ( – 10 February 1808) was an Irish people, Irish portrait-painter. He spent considerable periods in London and Rome before returning to Dublin in the early 1790s. Until the mid-1770s he worked mostly in pastel. His s ...

painted a flattering portrait in a tiara.

Companion to her father

When Charlotte arrived to live with her father in 1784, he was an ailing alcoholic. She found his physical state disgusting, and he was suffering from mental degeneration and using a litter for travel. He did, however, introduce Charlotte into society, allowing her to wear

his mother ''His Mother'' is a 1912 American silent film produced by Kalem Company. It was directed by Sidney Olcott with Gene Gauntier and Jack J. Clark in the leading roles. It was one of more than a dozen films produced by the Kalem Company filmed in Ire ...

's famous Sobieska jewellery. She continually, and unsuccessfully, sought gifts of jewels or money from her close-fisted father; but this was probably largely out of a concern for the welfare of her mother and children. Within a month of arriving at Florence, she did manage to persuade her father to provide at last for Clementina. By this time, Charlotte was also in poor health, suffering from an ailment that would result in her death from "obstruction of the liver" just two years after her father. Indeed, shortly after she arrived in Florence, a protruding growth forced her to have clothes altered. The biographer Douglas reports that around this time, a visitor described her as:

a tall, robust woman of a very dark complexion and a coarse-grained skin, with more of a masculine boldness than feminine modesty or elegancy, but easy and unassuming in her manners, amply possessed of... volubility of tongue and... spirit of coquetry.

Charlotte sorely missed her mother (whom she vainly hoped Charles would allow to come to Rome) and her children, writing to her mother as many as 100 times in a single year; she also feared that Rohan would take another lover; all this is revealed in her dispirited letters home, as she awaited Charles's death. She was successful in helping to organise her father's social life, as well as in persuading him to reduce his drinking in his final years. When staying for a short visit in Pisa with her father, she made a separate visit to her uncle Henry Stuart who was at Perugia. There she was successful in arranging a reconciliation between Henry and Charles.

Final months

In December 1785, she enlisted the help of Henry Stuart to get Charles back to the Palazzo Muti in Rome. On arrival in Rome with her father, the Pope welcomed Charlotte as the "Duchess of Albany". In Rome, Charlotte remained her father's carer and companion, and did her best to make his life bearable until he died of a stroke two years later on 30 January 1788. Her sacrifice for him was considerable—she was torn between an evident affection for her father in Rome and her mother and three children left behind in Paris. On her father's death, the French court awarded her a pension of 20,000 livres. Charlotte inherited much of her father's property, including his Florentine residence, furniture and ornaments, although many of the Sobieski family jewels passed to Henry Stuart. She subsequently sold the Florentine palace and much of the possessions. Charlotte would spend much of her final months in the company of Henry Stuart. She also became godmother to Countess Mary Norton, a member of her court. Charlotte also wrote to her mother about her worsening health, noting that she had a swelling and pain when breathing. She made several trips to improve her health at spa towns, including at Nocera in Umbria and at Bologna where she sought medical treatment. Charlotte was to survive her father by only twenty-two months and never saw her children again. On 9 October 1789, while staying in Bologna at the Palazzo Vizzani Sanguinetti, the home of her friend the Marchesa Giulia Lambertini-Bovio, a relative of Pope Benedict XIV, she died there at age 36 of

liver cancer Liver cancer (also known as hepatic cancer, primary hepatic cancer, or primary hepatic malignancy) is cancer that starts in the liver. Liver cancer can be primary (starts in liver) or secondary (meaning cancer which has spread from elsewhere to th ...

. In her will, written just three days before her death, Charlotte left her mother a sum of 50,000 livres and an annuity of a further 15,000. Her physical possessions, jewels and other personal property passed to Henry. However, it was two years before Henry Stuart, her executor, and now considered by Jacobites to be King Henry IX, would release the money. Indeed, he only agreed to do this when Clementina signed a "quittance" renouncing, on behalf of herself and her descendants, any further claim on the estate. Charlotte was buried in the Church of San Biagio, near where she died, as she had requested in her will. When the church was pulled down by the French in 1797, Charlotte's remains were believed to have been moved to the Oratorio della Santissima Trinità in 1801, however this was not verified. When it closed in 1961, her monument, and possibly her remains, were also moved to the nearby Chiesa della Santissima Trinità but again it is not known for certain where her remains lie.

Legacy

For many years, Charlotte's three children remained unknown to history, and it was believed that the direct line of James II and Mary of Modena ended with the death of Henry in 1807. However, in the 1950s, research by the historians

Alasdair and Hetty Tayler Alexander Norwich Tayler (11 July 1870 – 8 November 1937) and his sister Helen Agnes Henrietta Tayler (24 March 1869 – 10 April 1951) were British historical writers, specialising in 17th and 18th century Scottish and English history. Hele ...

revealed the existence of two daughters and a son. Historian

George Sherburn George Wiley Sherburn (1884 – 28 November 1962) was an American scholar of eighteenth-century English literature. He was a specialist of Alexander Pope. He was an English professor at Harvard University Harvard University is a private Iv ...

then discovered the letters from Charlotte to her mother, from which he wrote his biography of Charles Edward.

Children

It appears that Clementina lived on in Fribourg, Switzerland, until her death in 1802 and that it was she who reared Charlotte's children in deliberate anonymity. Their identities were concealed by a variety of aliases and ruses, not even being mentioned in Charlotte's detailed will. The will makes reference only to Clementina and to Charlotte's desire that Clementina might be able to provide for "her necessitous relations". The reason these children remained secret can be explained by the fact that the relationship between Archbishop Ferdinand de Rohan and Charlotte, who had been forbidden to marry, was highly illicit and would have been scandalous. Marie Victoire Adelaide (born 1779) and Charlotte Maximilienne Amélie (born 1780) were thought to have been placed in the care of Thomas Coutts, the London banker, and a distant relative of the Walkinshaws. They remained in anonymity and were believed to have been simply absorbed into English society. Charlotte's son Charles Edward (born in Paris in 1784) followed a different path. Calling himself ''Count Roehenstart'' (Rohan+Stuart), he was educated by his father's family in Germany, became an officer in the Russian army, and a general in the Austrian service. He travelled widely—visiting India, America, and

the West Indies The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greater ...

—before coming to England and Scotland. He told such tall tales of his origins and adventures that few believed his claims to royal descent. Indeed, it was not until the 20th century that historian George Sherburn established that he was indeed who he had claimed to be.He died in Scotland in 1854 as the result of a coach accident near

and was buried at Dunkeld Cathedral, where his grave can still be seen. He married twice but had no issue. Occasionally, it has been suggested that Prince Charles married Clementina Walkinshaw, and thus that Charlotte was legitimate and could legally claim to be her father's successor. However, there are no records to substantiate this claim, and the affidavit signed by Clementina on 9 March 1767 explicitly disavows the idea. Further, Charles's initial disavowal of Charlotte speaks against her legitimacy. It was generally believed that Charlotte's daughters also died without issue but Peter Pininski believed that Charlotte's daughter, Victoire Adelaide, did have issue. Pininski's 2002 book suggested that Jules-Hercule, Prince de Guéméné and Duke of Montbazon, elder brother of Ferdinand de Rohan (and aide-de-camp to Henry Stuart in 1745) recognised Charlotte's offspring as his own – thus giving her status in that tight family, and claimed that in 1793, at the outbreak of the French revolution, Victoire Adelaide de Rohan went to relatives in Poland and there met and married Paul Anthony Louis Bertrand de Nikorowicz, a Polish nobleman and son of a banker. They had a son, Antime, who was the father of Charles and a daughter, Julia-Thérèse, who married Count Leonard Pininski and became Peter Pininski's great-great-grandmother. Pininski's evidence for his thesis has been described as "often indirect, if not elliptical"; the Rohans were a large family, and it is easy to confuse its many members. A former chairman of the Royal Stuart Society, however, stated that Pininski's evidence seemed "genuine", and peerage editor Hugh Massingberd described it as "painstakingly researched ... proof to surely the most sceptical pedant's satisfaction". Pininski's hypothesis has, however, since been challenged by genealogist Marie-Louise Backhurst in two articles in 2013 and 2021. Backhurst provides evidence that Charlotte's second daughter, who was always called Victoire Adelaide, was married firstly at St Roch, Paris, in November 1804 to a military doctor in the service of Napoleon, Pierre Joseph Marie de St Ursin. The marriage record has Victoire Adelaide Roehenstart, daughter of Maximilien and his wife Clementine Ruthven, the same parental record as her brother Charles. By St Ursin she was the mother of Theodore Marie de St Ursin, who was born in Paris on 29 June 1809 and who was still resident in Paris in 1832 and perhaps later, he having entered the seminary of St Sulpice at Issy in 1828 and been ordained a deacon there that year. In 1823 his mother married again, to naval officer , brother of the adopted son of the late Duke of Bouillon, but her place and date of death have not yet been found. Backhurst concludes that Madame Nikorowicz was actually Marie Victoire de Thorigny, and more likely to have been the illegitimate daughter of Jules, Prince de Rohan, brother of Ferdinand and thus a first cousin to Victoire Adelaide and without the Stuart descent. Pininski had argued that Backhurst's interpretation had been based on a destroyed document that was "reconstituted" seventy years later and that no document confirmed the birth of Marie Victoire's son.

In Jacobite folklore

Charlotte Stuart's story did not take long to enter into the Jacobite folklore. The Scots poet, Robert Burns (1759–96), a near contemporary, wrote a number of works celebrating the tragic romanticism of the Jacobite cause. Amongst them was ''The Bonnie Lass of Albanie'', a lament to Charlotte Stuart probably written at the time of her death. Indeed, evidence from an unpublished collection of letters from Burns to Robert Ainslie reveals the Poet's fascination with Charlotte, in that he considered naming one of his own illegitimate children Charlotte after her. Burns wrote:

This lovely maid's of royal blood, That ruled Albion's kingdoms three; But Oh, Alas! for her bonnie face, They hae wrang'd the lass of Albany.

Notes and references

Sources

* Douglas, Hugh (2004
"Walkinshaw, Clementine, styled countess of Albestroff (c.1720–1802)"
''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, , retrieved 2007-12-14 (subscription required) * * * Magnusson, Magnus, ''Scotland: The Story of a Nation'' London, 2000 HarperCollins * * Pininski, Peter, ''The Stuarts' Last Secret'' Tuckwell Press, 2001 * * Pittock, Murray G. H. (September 2004; online edn, May 2006
"Charles Edward (1720–1788)"
''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, , retrieved 2007-12-14 (subscription required) * * Uilleam Stiùbhart, Domhnall, ''The cursed fruits of Charlie's loins?'' in '' The Scotsman'' Fri 15 April 2005
The Scotsman.com

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stuart, Charlotte, Duchess Of Albany Stuart, Charlotte Duchess of Albany Stuart, Charlotte Duchess of Albany People from Liège Charlotte Illegitimate children of British monarchs Jacobites Deaths from liver cancer 18th-century Scottish women Albany, Charlotte Stuart, Duchess of Peers created by Charles Edward Stuart