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Charlotte Stuart styled Duchess of Albany (October 1753 –November 17, 1789) was the illegitimate daughter and only known child of the Jacobite pretender Prince Charles Edward Stuart ('Bonnie prince Charlie')
Life
She was born in October 29 1753 at Liège to Charles and his mistress Clementina Walkinshaw. Clementina was the daughter of a Jacobite family from Lanarkshire who has met the Prince in Glasgow during the Jacobite rising of 1745, as he retreated from Derby. In 1752, this relationship was rekindled when she joined him in exile in the Low Countries, and became his mistress for the next eight years. The next year, Charlotte, their own child was born.
Yet the relationship was disastrous. Charles was already a disillusioned angry alcoholic. Often away from home, he seldom referred to his daughter, and when he did, it was as "ye cheild".[1] In 1760, a badly beaten Clementina, fled and retired to Paris with Charlotte. She took up residence in the Visitandine convent on the Rue de Bacq. Where Charles' father, James Stuart ('the Old Pretender') granted her a pension of 6,000 livres. In 1766, James died, but Charles refused to make any provision for mother and daughter, forcing Clementina to appeal to his brother Cardinal Henry Stuart. Henry gave them an allowance of 5,000 livres, this lower amount forcing them to find cheaper lodgings in the convent of Notre Dame at Meaux-en-Brie.
After the prince married in 1772, Clementina and her daughter, now in penury, travelled to Rome hoping to embarrass Charles into providing support. However, the Prince reacted angrily refusing to see them. Indeed he would never see Clementina again, moreover he refused his daughter permission to marry.
Unable to find a husband, Charlotte instead became the mistress of Ferdinand Maximilien Mériadec de Rohan, Archbishop of Bordeaux and Cambrai. By him she had three Children: two daughters, Aglaë and Marie Victoire, and finally a son Charles Edward, who was born in Paris in 1784. However, her children was kept secret, and remained largely unknown until the twentieth century. When Charlotte eventually left France for Florence, she entrusted the children into the care of her mother, and it appears that her Father never knew of their existence.
Reconciliation
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Only when it became clear that his marriage to his wife Princess Louise of Stolberg-Gedern was over, and he would have no other children, did Charles take an interest in Charlotte. On March 23, 1783 he altered will to made her his heir. He then gave his daughter the title of Duchess of Albany in the peerage of Scotland, and styled her "Her Royal Highness". The following week, he signed an act of legitimation which was sent to Louis XVI - and in November she appointed to the Order of the Thistle. The legitimisation made it easier for Charlotte to inherit Charles' estate. However, being illegitimate at birth, Charlotte had no rights of succession to her Stuart claims to the British throne (although it caused later historians some confusion).
However, by this stage the Jacobite pretensions were farcical anyway. European rulers had long since ceased to take Charles seriously, and even the Pope refused to recognise his royal title. When Charlotte came to live with her father in October 1784 at the Palazzo San Clemente in Florence, the 'Count d'Albany' was an was an ailing, senile alcoholic. She became his carer and companion, and did her best to make his miserable end more bearable. In his last days, she accompanied her father to Rome and remained with him until his death there in January 1788. Her sacrifice for him was considerable, she had left her mother and, unbeknown to Charles, her three Children behind in Paris.[2]
Sadly Charlotte survived her father by barely a year. She died of liver cancer, age 36, on November 17, 1789 at the Palazzo Vizzani Sanguinetti, now Palazzo Ranuzzi in Bologna. Her mother lived on, a miserable existence, in Switzerland till her death in 1802. Charlotte was buried in the Church of San Biagio, in the same neighbourhood she died. When the Church was pulled down by the French in 1797, it appears that Charlotte's remains were moved to the Oratorio della Santissima Trinità and then in 1961 to the nearby Chiesa della Santissima Trinità.
Descendents
Her Children were raised in anonymity, their identities concealed by a variety of alias and ruses. They were not even mentioned in her will, which detailed every member of her household.[3]
Charlotte's son, Charles Edward, known as 'Count Roehenstart' (Rohan+Stuart), later travelled widely, he went to the USA in 1812 and in 1816 came to Scotland. Indeed, he died in Scotland in 1854 as the result of a coach accident, and was buried at Dunkeld Cathedral. He married twice, but had no issue.[4] Aglae Charlotte (born c. 1778) died young, whilst Marie Victoire was unknown to history until the publication of Peter Pininski's claims to be her descendent, in 2001.
Occasionally it has been suggested that Prince Charles married Clementina Walkinshaw, and thus that Charlotte was, in fact legitimate, and could legally claim to be her father's successor. However, there are no records to substantiate this claim, and indeed there is a sworn affidavit signed by Clementina on March 9, 1767 explicitly disavowing the idea. Further, Charles' initial disavowal of Charlotte speaks against legitimacy.
It is generally believed that Charlotte's daughters also died without issue. However, according to Peter Pininski[5], Charlotte's younger daughter, Marie Victoire de Rohan, demoiselle de Thorigny, married Paul Anthony Louis Bertrand de Nikorowicz, a Polish nobleman. Their granddaughter, Julia de Nikorowicz, married Count Leonard Pininski and was Pininski's great-great-grandmother.
External links
- The Jacobite Heritage: Charlotte, Duchess of Albany
Notes and references
- ^ Kybert, S.Mc. Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Biography p.270
- ^ Uilleam Stiùbhart, Domhnall The cursed fruits of Charlie's loins? in The Scotsman Fri 15 Apr 2005
- ^ her will
- ^ englishmonarchs on the Stuart Claimants (accessed Feb 4 2007)
- ^ The Stuarts' Last Secret, 2001
- Pininski, Peter, The Stuarts' Last Secret, Tuckwell Press, 2001
- Uilleam Stiùbhart, Domhnall The cursed fruits of Charlie's loins? in The Scotsman Fri 15 Apr 2005 (The Scotsman.com)