Charlotte Stuart, Duchess of Albany

Charlotte Stuart by Hugh Douglas Hamilton, Scottish National Portrait Gallery

Charlotte Stuart, styled Duchess of Albany (29 October 1753 – 17 November 1789), was the illegitimate daughter of the Jacobite pretender Prince Charles Edward Stuart ('Bonnie Prince Charlie') 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 the Prince, taking Charlotte. Charlotte spent most of her life in French convents, before herself becoming a mistress with illegitimate children. She was finally reconciled to her father in 1784, when he legitimised her and created her Duchess of Albany. She became his carer and companion in the last years of his life, before dying less that two years later.

1753-1783

Clementina Walkinshaw c. 1760 - Charlotte's abused mother

Charlotte was born on 29 October 1753 at Liège to Charles and his mistress Clementina Walkinshaw. Clementina (1720-1802) had met the Prince during the Jacobite rising of 1745 (when he was attempting to regain by force the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland, which had been lost by his grandfather James Stuart in 1689). Clementina was one of the ten daughters of John Walkinshaw of Barrowhill, who had fought for Charles's father in the rising of 1715 and then served him at Avignon, but she was now living at the home of her uncle Sir Hugh Paterson at Bannockburn, near Stirling. The Prince came to Sir Hugh's house 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 Mountbazon (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 Clementine was at Dunkirk and in some financial difficulties, so he sent 50 Louis d'Or as monetary assistance and then dispatched Sir Henry Goring to entreat her to come to Ghent and live with him as his mistress. Goring complained of being used as “no better than a pimp”, and shortly after left Charles' 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 in October 29th 1753.

Cardinal Henry Stuart, Charlotte's uncle.

The relationship between Prince and mistress was disastrous. Charles was already a disillusioned, angry alcoholic when they began living together, and he became violent towards, and insanely possessive of, Clementinatreating 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”. By 1760, Clementina had had enough. She contacted Charles’ staunchly Roman Catholic father James Stuart ('the Old Pretender') and expressed a desire to secure a Catholic education for Charlotte and to retire to a convent. (In 1750, during an incognito visit to London, Charles had nominally disavowed Roman Catholicism for the Anglican Church.) James agreed to pay her an annuity of 10,000 livres and, in July 1760, he aided her escape with the 7 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 had to flee in fear of her life. A furious Charles circulated descriptions of them both, but it was to no avail.

For the next 12 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 Great Britain) 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. This lower amount forced them to find cheaper lodgings in the convent of Notre Dame at Meaux-en-Brie.

Louise of Stolberg-Gedern, Charles' wife was only months older than his daughter

In 1772, the Prince, then aged 51, married the 19 year old Princess Louise of Stolberg-Gedern (who was only a year older than Charlotte). Clementina, 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 Augusta 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 of all discussions.

Towards the end of 1772, Clementina and Charlotte unexpectedly arrived in Rome to press their desperate cause in person. (The trip pushed Clementina further into debt.) 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 and already in poor health, (she was apparently suffering from a liver ailment shared by the Stuarts) 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.

Unable to marry, Charlotte, otherwise sought a protector and provider. Probably unbeknown to Charles, she became the mistress of Ferdinand Maximilien Mériadec de Rohan, Archbishop of Bordeaux and Cambrai. 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 the children — and she was only just recovering from her son's birth — into the care of her mother, and it appears that few, and certainly not her father, knew of their existence.

1783-1789

Charlotte Stuart (again by Hugh Douglas Hamilton)

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 he 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, wrote contesting the legitimisation as being irregular and confusing to the succession. Louis XVI eventually did confirm the act and register it wither the Parlement of Paris, but not until September 6, 1787.

In July 1784, having granted Louise a legal separation, he summoned Charlotte to Florence, where he was now resident, and in November installed her in the Palazzo Guadagni as Duchess of Albany, styling her "Her Royal Highness" — and appointing her to the Order of the Thistle. Nevertheless, being illegitimate at birth, Charlotte still had no right of succession to the Stuart claim to the British throne. However, by this stage were of little value: European rulers had long since ceased to take Charles seriously; even the Pope 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'.

Charles Stuart in 1775 by Hugh Douglas Hamilton, Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Not quite the romantic figure of his youth.

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’s famous Sobiaski 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. 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. Charlotte sorely missed her mother (whom she vainly hoped Charles would allow to come to Rome) and her children; she also feared that Rohan would take another lover; all this is revealed in her dispirited letters home, as she awaited Charles' death.

In December 1785, she enlisted the help of Henry Stuart to get Charles back to the Palazio Muti in Rome. There Charlotte remained her father’s carer and companion, and did her best to make his life bearable until his eventual death from a stroke two years later (31 January 1788). Her sacrifice for him was considerable: she was torn between an evident affection for him, and the mother and three children left behind in Paris.

Charlotte survived her father by only twenty-two months, and never saw her children again. On October 9th 1789, she arrived at the Palazzo Vizzani Sanguinetti (now Palazzo Ranuzzi) in Bologna, the home of her friend the Marchesa Giulia Lambertini-Bovio; there she died of liver cancer, age 36, on 17 November 1789. In her will, written just three days before her death, Charlotte left her mother, Clementina, a sum of 50,000 livres and an annuity of a further 15,000. However, it was two years before Henry Stuart, her executor, and now considered by Jacobites to be 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, in the same neighbourhood where she died. When the church was pulled down by the French in 1797, Charlotte's remains were moved to the Oratorio della Santissima Trinità, and then when it closed in 1961 her monument, and possibly her remains, were moved to the nearby Chiesa della Santissima Trinità.

Descendants

Marie-Victoire, Princess de Rohan. Charles's secret granddaughter

Clementina lived on in Switzerland until her death in 1802, and it was she that raised Charlotte's children. They were brought up in deliberate anonymity, their identities concealed by a variety of alias and ruses, not even being mentioned in Charlotte’s detailed will. The will only makes reference to her mother, and to the desire Clementine might be able to provide for "her necessitous relations."

Marie Victoire Adelaide (born 1779) and Charlotte Maximilienne Amélie (born 1780) appear 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 most probably 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 travelled widely, visiting Germany, Austria, India, America and the West Indies, 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 the 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 Stirling Castle, 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, in fact, legitimate and could legally claim to be her father's successor. However, there are no records to substantiate this claim, and indeed the sworn affidavit signed by Clementina on 9 March 1767 explicitly disavows the idea. Further, Charles' initial disavowal of Charlotte speaks against her legitimacy.

It is generally believed that Charlotte's daughters also died without issue. However, according to Peter Pininski, Charlotte's elder daughter, Marie Victoire, married Paul Anthony Louis Bertrand de Nikorowicz, a Polish nobleman. Their granddaughter, Julia de Nikorowicz, married Count Leonard Pininski and was Peter Pininski's great-great-grandmother.

Legacy

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.

This lovely maid's of nobel blood,

That ruled Albion's kingdoms three;

But Oh, Alas! for her bonie face,

They hae wrang'd the lass of ALBANIE.

Ancestors

16. Charles I of England

8. James II of England

17. Princess Henrietta Maria of France

4. James Francis Edward Stuart

18. Alfonso IV d'Este, Duke of Modena

9. Mary of Modena

19. Laura Martinozzi

2. Charles Edward Stuart

20. John III Sobieski

10. Jakub Ludwik Sobieski

21. Marie Casimire Louise de la Grange d'Arquien

5. Maria Klementyna Sobieska

22 Philipp Wilhelm, Elector Palatine

11. Countess Palatine Hedwig Elisabeth Amelia of Neuburg

23. Landgravine Elisabeth Amalie of Hesse-Darmstadt

1. Charlotte Stuart

6. John Walkinshaw of Barrowhill

3. Clementina Walkinshaw

14. Sir Hugh Paterson of Bannockburn, Bt.

7. Katherine Paterson

Sources

• Kybert, Susan Maclean Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Biography London, 1988 Unwin ISBN 0044403879
• Magnusson, Magnus Scotland:The Story of a Nation London, 2000 Harper Collins ISBN 0006531911
• McFerran, Noel S Charlotte, Duchess of Albany www.The Jacobite Heritage (accessed February 04 2007)
• Pininski, Peter, The Stuarts' Last Secret’’ Tuckwell Press, 2001 ISBN 186232199X
• Uilleam Stiùbhart, Domhnall The cursed fruits of Charlie's loins? in The Scotsman Fri 15 April 2005 (The Scotsman.com)

External links

• The Jacobite Heritage (a collection of essays, source texts and other resources maintained by Noel S. McFerran)