Charlotte Stuart, Duchess of Albany
Charlotte Stuart, styled Duchess of Albany was the illegitimate daughter of the Jacobite pretender Charles Edward Stuart and his only child to survive infancy.
Charlotte's mother was Clementina Walkinshaw, who was mistress to Charles Edward from 1752 until 1760. After years of abuse, Clementina left him, taking Charlotte with her. Charlotte spent most of her life in French convents, estranged from a father who refused to make any provision for her. Unable to marry, she herself became a mistress with illegitimate children, taking Ferdinand de Rohan, Archbishop of Bordeaux, as her lover.
She was finally reconciled with her father in 1784, when he legitimised her and created her Duchess of Albany in the Jacobite peerage. She left her children with her mother, and became her father's carer and companion in the last years of his life, before dying less than two years after him. Her offspring was raised in anonymity; however, as Prince Charles Stuart's only grandchildren, they have been the subject of Jacobite interest since their lineage was uncovered in the 20th century.
Royal parentage
Charlotte Stuart was born on 29 October 1753 in Liège to Charles and his mistress, Clementina Walkinshaw. Charles and Clementina had met during the Jacobite rising of 1745, when he came to Scotland from France in an attempt to regain by force the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland, which had been lost by his grandfather, James II of England in 1689. Clementina was the youngest of the ten daughters of John Walkinshaw of Barrowhill. The Walkinshaws owned the lands of Barrowfield and Camlachie, and her father had become a wealthy Glasgow merchant. However, he was also an Episcopalian Protestant and a Jacobite who had fought for the Prince's father in the rising of 1715, been captured at the Battle of Sheriffmuir, before escaping from Stirling Castle and fleeing to continental Europe. In 1717, he had been pardoned by the British government and returned to Glasgow, where his youngest daughter was born probably at Camlachie. However, Clementina was largely educated on the Continent and later converted to Roman Catholicism. In 1746, she was living at the home of her uncle Sir Hugh Paterson at Bannockburn, near Stirling. The Prince came to Sir Hugh's home 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. Since she was living under her uncle's protection, it is not thought the two were lovers at the time.After the defeat of the Prince's rebellion at the Battle of 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 Montbazon, 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 forties. In 1752, he heard that Clementina was at Dunkirk and in some financial difficulties and so he sent 50 louis d'or to help her and then dispatched Sir Henry Goring to entreat her to come to Ghent and to live with him as his mistress. Goring, who described Clementina as a "bad woman", complained of being used as "no better than a pimp" and soon left Charles's employ. However, by November 1752, Clementina was living with Charles and would remain as his mistress for the following eight years. The couple moved to Liège where Charlotte, their only child, was born on 29 October 1753 and baptised into the Roman Catholic faith at the church of Notre Dame-des-Fonts in Liège.
Separation from father (1760–1783)
The relationship between the prince and Charlotte's mother was disastrous. Charles was already a disillusioned, angry alcoholic when they began living together, and he became violent towards and insanely possessive of Clementina, treating 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". During a temporary move to Paris, the Prince's lieutenants record ugly public arguments between the two and that his drunkenness and temper were damaging his reputation. By 1760, they were in Basel, and Clementina had had enough of Charles's intoxication and their nomadic lifestyle. She contacted his staunchly Roman Catholic father, James Stuart, and expressed a desire to secure a Catholic education for Charlotte, and to retire to a convent. James agreed to pay her an annuity of 10,000 livres and, in July 1760, there is evidence to suggest he aided her escape from the watchful Charles, with the seven-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 to flee in fear of her life. A furious Charles circulated descriptions of them both, but it was to no avail.Appeals from France
For the next twelve 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 Scotland, England and Ireland, 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.Image:Louise, Countess d'Albany.jpg|thumb|right|220px|Louise of Stolberg-Gedern, Charles's wife. She was only months older than his daughter Charlotte.
In 1772, the Prince, then aged fifty-one, married the nineteen-year-old Princess Louise of Stolberg-Gedern, who was only a year older than Charlotte. Charlotte, 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 Auguste 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 off all discussions.
Mistress of an Archbishop
Towards the end of 1772, Clementina and Charlotte unexpectedly arrived in Rome to press their desperate cause in person. 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 was in poor health. She was apparently suffering from a liver ailment shared by the Stuarts and 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.Lacking legitimacy or permission, Charlotte was unable to marry. Therefore she sought a protector and provider. Probably unbeknown to Charles, she became the mistress of Ferdinand Maximilien Mériadec de Rohan, Archbishop of Bordeaux and Cambrai. Ferdinand de Rohan—related by blood to the house of Stuart as well as Bourbon and Lorraine—was also unable to marry legitimately, having entered the Church as a younger son of a noble house. By him, she had at least three children: two daughters, Charlotte Maximilienne Amélie and Marie Victoire or Victoire Adélaïde, 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 her children, and she was only just recovering from her son's birth, to the care of her mother, and it appears that few, and certainly not her father, knew of their existence.
Reconciliation with her father
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, 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, contested the legitimisation as being irregular and confusing to the succession. Louis XVI eventually did confirm the act and register it with the Parlement of Paris, but not until 6 September 1787.In July 1784, having granted his wife Louise a legal separation, Charles wrote to his daughter calling her "ma chère fille". In his letter, he summoned Charlotte to Florence, where he was now resident. She arrived in Florence on 5 October 1784. In November, he installed her in the Palazzo Guadagni as Duchess of Albany, styling her "Her Royal Highness". Nevertheless, being illegitimate at birth, Charlotte still had no right of succession to the Stuart claim to the British throne. However, by this stage, the claims were of little value. European rulers had long since ceased to take Charles seriously. Even Pope Pius VI 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.
That a Stuart restoration was now less than unlikely did not prevent the Prince presenting Charlotte as the next generation of the cause. On 30 November 1784, Charles held a 'State' banquet for Charlotte and invested her with the Order of the Thistle. He had medals struck for her, bearing the figure of Hope, the map of England, and the Stuart arms with legends such as "Spes Tamen Est Una". He also had her idealised in art; the Scottish artist Gavin Hamilton was commissioned to draw her in chalk in the neo-classical style, whilst Hugh Douglas Hamilton painted a flattering portrait in a tiara.