Claimants to Royalty

by John Henry Ingram

The story of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the "bonnie Prince Charlie" of song, is too well known to need recapitulation here. That he died in 1788, without leaving any legitimate offspring, is a fact equally well known; as also that his brother Henry Stuart, Cardinal York, who died in 1807, was the last of his ill-fated race. Notwithstanding the incontrovertible nature of these circumstances, attempts have been made within the last thirty or forty years to prove that Prince Charles did leave a legitimate son, the child of his wife the Princess Louisa; and that two brothers, who until quite recently were residing in London under the pseudonyms of "Counts d'Albanie," were the children of this unknown royal prince, and therefore grandchildren of "Charles the Third."

This myth was first publicly propagated in a work entitled "Tales of the Century; or, Sketches of the Romance of History between the years 1746 and 1846," published in 1847, and purporting to be by "John Sobieski and Charles Edward Stuart." Some suggestive hints, it is true, had been thrown out as early as 1822, in a volume of poems by one of these brothers; but that book was published as by "John Hay Allen," and no definite assumption of royal lineage would appear to have been made until the Edinburgh publication of 1847. According to the legend detailed in the three sections into which the work was divided, in 1831 an ancient medical man, of extreme Jacobite views, finding himself dying, confided to a young Highland gentleman, who was visiting him in London, the long-hoarded secret that the Gaels "have yet a king." The young Scotchman is naturally inquisitive as to the meaning of this mysterious communication, and has his curiosity gratified by a recital of the following romantic story by Dr. Beaton.

According to that deceased gentleman, he chanced to be making a tour in Italy, in 1773, and as he was walking along the road from Parma to Florence, he was startled by the passing of a carriage with scarlet outriders. On glancing into the conveyance he was still more startled by beholding the not-to-be-forgotten countenance of his beloved "Prince Charlie," seated by a lady's side. On the evening of the same day, whilst meditating on what he had seen, he was accosted by a man of military appearance, and asked whether he was Dr. Beaton, the Scotch physician. On replying in the affirmative, he was informed that his immediate attendance was required in a case of urgency, and all his questions as to the nature of the patient's malady were disposed of in a very unceremonious manner. His reluctance to be blindfolded before entering a carriage that was in waiting was overcome by the intimation that it was on behalf of him whom both recognised as their royal chief, that is to say, Prince Charles.

After the usual style of such mystic tales, Dr. Beaton was taken to a secluded palace, and after being led through the usual corridors and apartments of such abodes, had his mask removed, and was permitted to inspect the magnificent chamber into which he had been inducted. His conductor did not allow much time for investigation, but rang a silver bell, and his summons being responded to by a little page in scarlet, he was enabled to inform the doctor, after a short conversation in German with the boy, that the accouchement of the lady he had been called in to attend, owing to the absence of her own regular medical attendant, was over, and apparently "without more than exhaustion." The news communicated through so uncustomary a channel was followed by the request that he would render such services as were necessary. He was taken into a gorgeous bedroom, where a lady who spoke English led him towards the bed, wherein he beheld the face of the lady he had seen in the carriage with Prince Charles, whilst by the bedside was a woman holding the newly-born babe wrapped in a mantle. The patient was in a somewhat critical condition, so Dr. Beaton hastily turned to a writing-table near at hand to write a prescription for her, and in so doing beheld among the trinkets on the table a miniature of Prince Charles, attired in the very uniform the doctor had seen him in at Culloden. The lady who had spoken English approached the table as if looking for something, and when Beaton looked again, the portrait had been turned on its face. Having performed his duties, the doctor was persuaded to take an oath on a crucifix, "never to speak of what he had seen, heard, or thought on that night, unless it should be in the service of his king—King Charles;" he was, also, desired to leave Tuscany that night, and then conducted from the dwelling in the same needlessly mysterious manner as he had been taken to it.

The doctor obeyed his injunctions to the letter, and at once departed from the neighbourhood. A few days later he arrived at a certain seaport, and one night, soon after his arrival, he was strolling along the beach when his attention was attracted by an English-looking vessel anchored off the coast. Upon inquiry this proved to be the Albina, an English frigate, commanded by Commodore O'Haleran. Whilst he was watching the vessel he beheld a small close carriage, accompanied by a horseman, whom he recognized as his guide on the night he was conducted to the residence of Prince Charles. His curiosity aroused by this singular coincidence, he stopped to watch what happened, and beheld a lady, bearing a babe in her arms, descend from the mysterious vehicle. This lady and her infantile charge were then conveyed on board the frigate, and no sooner had they got on board than the vessel hoisted sail and slowly disappeared. The babe, it is implied, was the legitimate son and heir of Prince Charles, thus mysteriously smuggled off in order to preserve it from the machinations of the English government.

Many years are supposed to have elapsed, and the boy born at St. Rosalie, in 1773, is next introduced as a grown man bearing the name of Captain O'Haleran, and supposed to be the son of the admiral formerly introduced as the commodore of that name. This individual creates no slight sensation in the Highlands by his supposed resemblance to the unforgotten Prince Charlie, whose eagle eye and Stuart features he is said to have; one ancient chieftain, indeed, of somewhat clouded mind, when he beholds the mysterious stranger, who is known by the cognomen of the "Red Eagle," addresses him as "Prince Charles," and reminds his Royal Highness that their last meeting was at the fatal fight of Culloden. Moreover, to make the reader understand the personage's rank beyond all question, his French attendant styles him "Monseigneur," and "Son Altesse Royal." In the final section of this fiction, the "Red Eagle" makes a misalliance by marrying an untitled English lady, and becomes the father, it is natural to infer, of the two individuals whose names figure on the title-page of Tales of the Century.

The reader must not imagine that this marvellous romance was intended to be regarded as myth; every effort was made to persuade the public into accepting it as fact, and as fact several persons in Great Britain and abroad have accepted it. But in the Quarterly Review for June 1847, the whole story was thoroughly analysed and ruthlessly demolished by some one conversant with all the bearings of the whole case. He undeniably proved that the implied son of Prince Charles was no other than Thomas, younger son of Admiral Allen, and himself an officer in the Navy, who married, in 1792, Catherine Manning, a clergyman's daughter; that in his will Admiral Allen termed him his son, and that the sons of this Thomas Allen, the soi disant "John Sobieski and Charles Edward Stuart," had respectively published a volume of poems, and had taken a wife in their proper names of Allen, thus completely ignoring their pretended royal ancestry.

Even had not direct testimony been forthcoming, the circumstantial evidence against the allegation that Prince Charles had left a legitimate child is so strong that no amount of "Romance of History" could upset it. In his latter days, when separated from his wife, the Princess Louisa, Prince Charles sent for his illegitimate daughter by Miss Walkinshaw; created her Duchess of Albany, made her mistress of his household, and left her by will almost everything that he possessed, including such family jewels and plate as were still in his possession. Not only did he omit to make any provision for, or the slightest bequest to, his supposed son and heir, but, what is still less comprehensible, neither did the Princess Louisa, the child's mother, ever appear to make any inquiry after it; nor when she died in 1824, when this pretended son must have been fifty years of age, did she give any sign that she was aware of his existence; nor did he, this son, come forward at any period of time to prove his birth and assert his parentage. After the death of Prince Charles, who, from the time of his father's decease, had borne the title of King of England, his brother, clearly ignorant of the existence of a nearer claimant to the distinction, also assumed the royal title, and caused himself to be addressed as a sovereign, and styled "Henry the Ninth, King of Great Britain and Ireland."

Many other proofs could be furnished of the utterly baseless nature of the claims of these pretenders to royalty, but it is needless; should any one desire to peruse a fuller exposition of this romance he may be referred to the number of the Quarterly Review already alluded to.

"John Sobieski Stuart," the elder of these claimants, died in February 1872, leaving no issue; but the younger brother, the pretended "Charles Edward Stuart," who is alleged to have received the cross of the Legion d' Honneur from the hands of the first Napoleon for bravery on the field of Waterloo, died on Christmas Eve, 1880, leaving several grown-up children, all of whom, it is believed, have assumed the pseudonym of "Stuart" and sham title of "d'Albany."