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'Charlotte Stuart', styled 'Duchess of Albany'^[1] (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.

Contents

Life

Reconciliation

Descendants

Notes and references

Life

Charlotte was born on 29 October 1753 at Liège to Charles and his mistress Clementina Walkinshaw. Clementina was the daughter of a Jacobite family from Lanarkshire and had met the Prince in Glasgow during the Jacobite rising of 1745. 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 only child, was born.
The relationship was disastrous. Charles was already a disillusioned, angry alcoholic when they began living together. Often away from home, he seldom referred to his daughter, and when he did, it was as "ye cheild".^[2]
In July 1760, a badly beaten Clementina fled to Paris with Charlotte and hid in the convent of the Nuns of the Visitation. An enraged Charles circulated descriptions of them both, but to no avail. However, Charles' father, James Stuart ('the Old Pretender'), did know of their location, having assisted in their flight.^[3] For the next 12 years, they continued to live in various French convents, supported by a pension of 10,000 livres granted by James Stuart. Charles himself 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 still refused to make any provision, 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 — and extracted a statement from her that she had never been married to Charles. This lower amount forced them to find cheaper lodgings in the convent of Notre Dame at Meaux-en-Brie.
After the Prince married Princess Louise of Stolberg-Gedern in 1772, Clementina, now in penury, again pressed Charles to provide support, and legitimise Charlotte. In April 1772, Charlotte herself wrote a touching, yet pleading, letter to "mon Augusta Papa" via Principal Gordon of the Scots College in Rome. Charles 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 abandon her mother, which she refused to do.
Towards the end of 1772, Clementina and Charlotte unexpectedly arrived in Rome to press their 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. Three years later, Charlotte, now in her twenty-second year and already in poor health, decided her only option was to marry as soon as possible. Charles, however, refused to give his permission, and she was left awaiting his royal pleasure.^[4]
Unable to marry, Charlotte, unbeknown to Charles, 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^[5] — into the care of her mother, and it appears that few, and certainly not her father, knew of their existence.

Reconciliation

Only after his childless marriage to Louise was over, and Charles had fallen seriously ill, did Charles 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 signed an act of legitimisation.
In July 1784, having granted Louise a legal separation, he summoned Charlotte to Florence, where he was now resident, and installed her in the Palazzo Guadagni as Duchess of Albany, styling her "Her Royal Highness" — and in November appointing her to the Order of the Thistle. The legitimisation made it easier for Charlotte to inherit Charles' estate. Nevertheless, being illegitimate at birth, Charlotte still had no right of succession to the Stuart claims to the British throne. 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. He was reduced to styling himself the 'Count d'Albany'.
When Charlotte arrived to live with her father in October 1784, he was an ailing, senile alcoholic. She became his carer and companion, and did her best to make his miserable end more bearable. 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 accompanied her father back to Rome and remained with him there until his eventual death 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.^[6]
Charlotte survived her father by only twenty-two months, and never saw her children again. She died of liver cancer, age 36, on 17 November 1789 at the Palazzo Vizzani Sanguinetti, now Palazzo Ranuzzi in Bologna. In her will, Charlotte left her mother a sum of 50,000 livres and an annuity of 15,000.^[7] However, it was two years before Henry Cardinal Stuart would release the money. 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 in 1961 to the nearby Chiesa della Santissima Trinità.

Descendants

Clementina lived on, a miserable existence, in Switzerland until her death in 1802, and it was she that raised Charlotte's children. They were brought up in anonymity, their identities concealed by a variety of alias and ruses, not even being mentioned in Charlotte’s detailed will.^[8]
Marie Victoire Adelaide (born 1779) and Charlotte Maximilienne Amélie (born 1780)^[9] appear to have been placed in the care of Thomas Coutts, the London banker, a distant relative of the Walkinshaws. They remained in anonymity and were most probably simply absorbed into English society.^[10]
Her son, Charles Edward, born in Paris in 1784, followed a different path. Calling himself 'Count Roehenstart' (Rohan+Stuart),^[11] 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.^[12] 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.^[13]
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,^[14] 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.

Notes and references

1. Granted in 1783, the title is often recorded as being in the 'Jacobite Peerage', although this is an historical fiction. It was granted in the Peerage of Scotland by Charles by virtual of his claim to be ''de jure'' King of Scots. Neither that claim, nor the title itself, were ever recognised by the British State.
2. Kybert, S.Mc. ''Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Biography'' p. 270.
3. Kybert, S. Mc. ''Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Biography'' p. 272.
4. Kybert, S.Mc. ''Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Biography'' pp. 287–8
5. Kybert, S. Mc. ''Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Biography'' p. 304.
6. Uilleam Stiùbhart, Domhnall. The cursed fruits of Charlie's loins? in The Scotsman Friday 15 April 2005, URL accessed 07 February 2007.
7. McFerran, Noel S. ''Will of Charlotte, Duchess of Albany, 1789'' in The Jacobite Heritage (accessed 5 February 2007).
8. McFerran, Noel S. ''Will of Charlotte, Duchess of Albany, 1789'' in The Jacobite Heritage (accessed February 05 2007).
9. Descendants of Bonnie Prince Charlie
10. Kybert, S.Mc. ''Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Biography p. 312.
11. Jacobite heritage ''General Charles Edward Stuart, Count Roehenstart'' (accessed 6 Feb 2007).
12. Kybert, S. Mc. ''Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Biography'' p. 313.
13. englishmonarchs on the Stuart Claimants (accessed 4 February 2007).
14. ''The Stuarts' Last Secret,'' 2001


★ Kybert, Susan Maclean Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Biography London, 1988 ISBN 0044403879

★ 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)