Clan Stewart · 1745–1746
The Young Pretender
Bonnie Prince Charlie's eight months in the Highlands — from Glenfinnan to the cave at Coiraghoth — and the long exile after.
Draft entry · awaiting review
Charles Edward Stuart was born in Rome in 1720, grandson of the deposed James VII and II, and grew up at the exiled court of his father — the 'Old Pretender' — in the Palazzo Muti. From the Continent he had been told he was a king-in-waiting and his father had been told the same for fifty years.
He landed at Eriskay on 23 July 1745 with seven companions. By 19 August at Glenfinnan, with the Camerons coming down the brae and the MacDonalds raising the standard, he had the makings of an army. Edinburgh fell in September. Prestonpans destroyed Sir John Cope's force in fifteen minutes. By December the army stood at Derby — closer to London than to its supply base.
The retreat began at Derby. Falkirk was won and Culloden was lost. After 16 April 1746 Charles was a fugitive in the heather of the western Highlands and Hebrides, with a price of £30,000 on his head. He was protected for five months by people who were hanged afterwards for protecting him. He left Scotland on a French frigate from Loch nan Uamh on 20 September 1746 — within sight of the beach where he had landed fourteen months before.
He never came back. He drifted between Paris, Avignon, Florence and Rome. He drank. He died in Rome in January 1788, aged sixty-seven, the cause to which his life had been promised long since lost. His brother Henry, Cardinal York, the last of the male Stuart line, lived another nineteen years on a pension from George III.