Stuart Claimants to the UK throne

Factual Questions
1

Charles Stuart (aka Bonnie Prince Charlie or Charles III) died in Rome in 1786 & was succeeded by his brother Henry Cardinal Stuart who died in 1807.

I know then the Stuart claim to the British throne was left to the King of Sardnia Charles-Emmanuel IV (the ggg-nephew of Charles II i.e. G-Grandson of Charles II’s sister Henrietta).

So 2 GQ:

  1. Are there any Stuart Pretenders today – not a guy with a website who claims descent – but a legit claimant?

  2. Have they or any been taken seriously since Charles III (really) and/or Henry?

2

  1. I believe that the current Duke of Bavaria has the best claim under the rules for succession, pre-Act of Settlement.

  2. No. Charles was the last one who had any success in trying to re-establish the Stuarts. By the end of his life time, he was a sad old alcoholic who had been passed by. By the time his brother Henry died, the Hanoverians had been in possesion for nearly a century, the political situation had stabilised, and the Highlands had been cleared. Plus, Walter Scott was writing romantic novels about the '45. Once the romantic novelists take you as a subject, you no longer have political significance: Piper’s Law :smiley: (See also Gone with the Wind for an additional example.)

3

I recall reading that Henry, Cardinal Stuart surrendered his claim to the throne to George III at some point around 1800. So, even allowing the assumption that Parliament had no authority to supersede the male line of the House of Stuart with James II’s daughters and son-in-law and then the Hanoverians, beginning with George III the title would pass to the House of Hanover and then to the Windsors.

Obviously, anybody can make a claim to the throne based on some genealogical traditions; whether such claims are taken seriously by even the most extreme partisans is another question. (My remotest known paternal-line ancestor was likely [as inferred from arms] the illegitimate son of John the illegitimate son of Richard III, which would make me the heir of line of the Plantagenet claim, if you want to get really farfetched!)

4

Wasn’t Queen Mary, William of Orange/William III’s wife and co-regent, a daughter of James II and senior in the Stuart line to James IV (the old pretender) and Charles Edward, Prince of Wales, a/k/a Bonnie Prince Charlie(the young pretender)? Doesn’t all this ignore the Act of Succession and the Protestant Ascendancy and the Act of Settlement?

5

Nope, SG. Remember that British practice is male-preference primogeniture.

Mary II was (as Princess Mary) heiress presumptive to the throne until the 1688 birth of James the Old Pretender, at which point he became heir apparent, on the same grounds as why Andrew (and his daughters) and then Edward are in line after Charles, Wills, and Harry for the present throne of the U.K., before their sister Anne who is their senior.

All those acts you mention are 1689 and later, and therefore excluded by the terms of the OP – which asked about Stuart pretenders. The stance of any Stuart pretender to the throne would require to be that the actions of the Glorious Revolution and its legal aftermath were contrary to the right of James the Old Pretender and his legitimate heirs of line to the throne, and that Parliament could not revise the succession to the throne by statute – that such an act would be ultra vires.

6

Your Highness :slight_smile: : isn’t geneology neat? You are absolutely right about Henry, Napoleon and his Italian conquest (& the giant fine Napoleon put on Pius VI) made a strange series of events. In the end Henry, aka “the now impovershed but formerly fabulously wealthy Henry” was evacuated in a British warship (!) out of naplesand George III pensioned him off at 4000 pounds per year – pretty much out of pity.

But could Henry make George king? (assuming parliment couldn’t – & we “know” it could) Could QEII make me her heir because I performed some service – I’d guess no … but I really don’t know … thanks PC, and all, for the input

7

The process of designating an heir apparent (instead of according to strict rules of birth) is called tanistry. That principle vanished from the Scottish Monarchy with Donald III in 1097 CE, but much later in England.

8

From Dynasty by John MacLeod:

9

I do not know whether Henry’s heirs accepted the validity of his gesture of renouncing his claim in favour of George III. He could abdicate, but not necessarily decide who his successor would be.

I also recall reading that, some time later, the then Stuart Pretender renounced the Stuart claim to the throne of England, but maintained the claim to the throne of Scotland. (The Stuart pretenders, naturally, did not recognise the Act of Union or the Kingdom of Great Britain.)

10

Ooh, baby. I’ve always been a yorkist at heart :wink:

But the Royal House of Stuart became extinct in the male line with the death of Henry Stuart, Duke of York, Cardinal Roman Catholic Church and Bishop of Frascati, in 1807. He had succeeded his elder brother, Charles Stuart, (“Bonnie Prince Charlie”), in 1788, on the Charles’ death without legitimate issue (he left one illegitimate daughter, Clementina, who also died without issue). Both were the sons of James, Prince of Wales, only son of James II, King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, deposed as King of England and Scotland in 1688, and as King of Ireland six months later, He died in exile in 1701. With the death of Cardinal Henry of York, representation of the House of Stuart passed to Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, King of Sardinia. The latter’s present heir is Franz, Duke of Bavaria.

It’s a very thin claim but hey the Tudors got the throne on less. Hmm, but then they led to the Stuarts…ooh this is getting deeply convoluted.

11

The Wittelsbachs are the rightful pretenders to the Stuart claim? A bunch of defunct Electors who got themselves named kings by kissing up to Napoleon and the Hohenzollerns – and then lost all power to the Hohenzollerns and then got thrown out for supporting them anyway? Even the Grimaldis played better power politics!

Hmmm — maybe I oughta start pushing mine? :slight_smile:

12

And of course there is the great irony that if there were a restoration and those germanic Windsors were booted out, they’d be replaced by a different family of germanic royalty. :smiley:

13

Strictly speaking, jimmmy, there ARE no Stuart claimants to the throne of the United Kingdom, because James II, the last Stuart king of England, Scotland and Ireland, was deposed in 1688, and the kingdoms of England and Scotland were not formally united until the Act of Union of 1707. Jacobites can hardly recognize the legitimacy of the Act of Union since no Stuart ruler ever assented to it. Check out the “Jacobite Heritage” website at members.rogers.com/jacobite. The Jacobites support the claim of Prince Franz von Wittelsbach, Duke of Bavaria, to be the legitimate king of England, Scotland, Ireland and (yes!) France, as separate kingdoms.

You mentioned “a guy with a website who claims descent.” I presume you’re talking about the Belgian Michael Lafosse, or “Prince Michael of Albany.” He’s an obvious fraud but, nevertheless, a very interesting case, and worthy of attention. Check out his website at www.royalhouseofstewart.org.uk, and his book, “The Forgotten Monarchy of Scotland.” Prince Michael claims he is the rightful heir of the Scottish Royal Stewarts (he spells the name in the original, Scottish way, rather than the Frenchified “Stuart”). His purported ancestor is Edward James Stuart, Bonnie Prince Charlie’s legitimate son (unknown to conventional history books) by his second marriage (likewise). Prince Michael’s position is that he could claim the throne of England, but he won’t; he’s an ardent Scottish nationalist (despite his foreign birth), he only wants to be king of Scotland, and he seems to think it was a bad idea for his purported ancestor, James VI and I, to accept the throne of England in the first place.

Even more remarkably, Prince Michael claims to be descended from Jesus of Nazareth! (Or at least he has allowed his “historiographer royal,” Laurence Gardner, to make this claim for him, in Gardner’s book “Bloodline of the Holy Grail.”) However, he does not make much of this claim and seems to think being descended from Mary, Queen of Scots, is much more important to him than being descended from Jesus. He also claims, by the way, to be descended from the Prophet Mohammed. Prince Michael’s organization, “The Royal House of Stewart,” has its own attached church, the “Celtic Apostolic Church,” which is nominally Christian, but “pre-Pauline” Christian – that is, they reject the additions Paul of Tarsus made to the early faith. Curiously, from what I can see, this church’s doctrine makes nothing of Prince Michael’s purported descent from Jesus.

Check out “Dagobert’s Revenge” magazine, at www.dagobertsrevenge.com. Remember “Holy Blood, Holy Grail,” that book from late '70s, by three BBC journalists, about the theory that Jesus of Nazareth not only had children, but those children were ancestors of the Merovingian kings of the Franks and the Austrian Hapsburgs? Sure you do! Well, apparently a lot of people have gotten interested in the idea – the magazine is about “Musick, Magick and Monarchism.” (It also pays a lot of attention to certain kinds of bands.) (Dagobert was a Merovingian king who was assassinated under mysterious circumstances – this, of course, was generations before Charlemagne.) Apparently there are now several persons who publicly claim some connection with the “Grail Blood.” Prince Michael, however, is the only one of these who is an active claimant to a throne. Prince Michael is also the only ACTIVE “Stuart” pretender to any throne; Prince Franz apparently enjoys the attention of the Jacobites but he otherwise he does not really seem to take very much interest in the whole thing.

If you read Laurence Gardner’s books, royalty and government were first established on earth by the Anunnaki (Annunaki?) gods of Sumer, who were extraterrestrial or extradimensional beings, or else humans genetically modified by such beings. Thus, true royalty are not merely the descendants of generals or pirates who got lucky, they are descendants of superhuman beings. A lot of the “Dagobert’s Revenge” crowd seem to share this view.

Monarchism is fun!

14

England never had Tanaistry. It was not an English custom.

15

That matter is currently a controversy (very tiny controversy) in France among the two claimants to the French Royal throne. One side maintains that the one power not available to even an absolute monarch is to renounce the throne for his heirs.

The other says that this is a valid practice.

The Imperial Throne of France, of course, has their own Bonapartiste candidate, but they don’t claim the Royal Throne.

16

BrainGlutton, thanks for the info about Prince Michael. I came across that guy’s website a while back, and didn’t realise the whole thing was a complete fantasy…the case he presents is credible. And there are a lot of people knocking around Europe who have viable but totally irrelevant claims to various thrones. I don’t care who your ancestor who was, you can’t be King of France.

17

I can probably guess which camp has the most professional genealogists. They, after all, would seem to have a vested interest in the notion that these things need to be kept track of.

18

Actually, the Cardinal-Duke of York never did renounce his claim. It is true that in 1784 he had indicated that, in the event of his brother’s death, he wished to be still styled ‘Cardinal York’ for the purposes of everyday use, but, in doing so, he explicitly re-asserted their claim to the throne. This decision had more to do with questions of papal etiquette, as it would have created considerable complications to have had a cardinal in Rome with the rank of a king.

It is also true that he bequeathed some of the remaining family heirlooms to the Prince Regent, which could be interpreted as a de facto recognition of him as his own heir, but his will made it clear that his claim to the throne ought pass to his nearest relative in accordance with the usual rules of succession.

The point was that everyone knew that any renunciation would have been irrelevant - it could probably only have been made on behalf of himself and his descendants, but, as he had no children, this meant that the claim would pass to the Sardinian branch anyway.

19

And all this time I’d been led to believe that the leading claimant to the Stone of Scone is Sean Connery.