On the collapse of the rising of 1715, the Jacobite Court, despairing of assistance from France or Spain, had turned for aid to Charles XII. of Sweden. Charles had conceived a violent hatred for George I., who had acquired by purchase from the King of Denmark two secular bishoprics which had been taken from Sweden by the Danes, and which had been incorporated in the electorate of Hanover. As early as 1715 Charles listened to a project of the Duke of Berwick, by which he should send a force of Swedish troops to Scotland, but he was then too busy fighting the Danes to engage in the scheme. In 1717 the Jacobites renewed negotiations with Sweden, and a plan was formed for a general rising in England simultaneously with an invasion of Scotland by the Swedish king in person at the head of an army of 12,000 Swedes. The plot came to the knowledge of the British Government in time; the Swedish ambassador in London was arrested; the project came to nothing; but in the following year a more promising scheme for a Stuart restoration was formed.
The Spanish Expedition of 1719.[10]
Spain, smarting under the loss of her Italian possessions, ceded to Austria by the Peace of Utrecht, had declared war on the Emperor and had actually landed an army in Sicily. In compliance with treaty obligations, Great Britain had to defend the Emperor, and in August 1718 a British squadron engaged and destroyed a Spanish fleet off Cape Passaro. Alberoni, the Spanish minister, was furious and determined on reprisals. He entered into an alliance with the Swedish king; a plan for invading Great Britain was formed, and negotiations were opened with the Jacobite Court. The death of Charles XII. in December detached Sweden from the scheme, but Alberoni went on with his preparations. A great armada under Ormonde was to carry a Spanish army to the west of England, and a subsidiary expedition under the Earl Marischal was to land in north-western Scotland. The Chevalier was summoned to Spain to join the expedition, or failing that to follow it to England. The fleet sailed from Cadiz in March 1719. James had left Rome in February, travelling by sea to Catalonia and thence to Madrid and on to Corunna. He reached the latter port on 17th April, only to learn of the dispersal of the Spanish fleet by a storm and the complete collapse of the adventure.
The auxiliary Scottish expedition, unconscious of the disaster, landed in the north-western Highlands; but after some vicissitudes and much dissension the attempt ended with the Battle of Glenshiel on the 10th of June—the Chevalier’s thirty-first birthday—and the surrender next day of the remainder of the Spanish troops, originally three hundred and seven in number.
James returned from Corunna to Madrid, where he lingered for some time, a not very welcome guest. There he learned of the rescue of Princess Clementina and of his marriage by proxy. Returning to Italy in August, he met Clementina at Montefiascone, where he was married in person on September 1st, 1719.
From this time forward until the end of his life, forty-seven years later, the Chevalier’s home was in Rome, where the Pope assigned him the Muti Palace as a residence, along with a country house at Albano, some thirteen miles from Rome.
Birth of Charles Edward, 1720.
In 1720, on December 20th by British reckoning (Dec. 31st by the Gregorian calendar), Prince Charles Edward was born at Rome, and with the birth of an heir to the royal line, Jacobite hopes and activities revived.
The Atterbury Plot, 1721-22.[11]
At this time the Jacobite interests in England were in charge of a Council of five members, frequently termed ‘the Junta.’ The members of this Council were the Earl of Arran, brother of Ormonde, the Earl of Orrery, Lord North, Lord Gower, and Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester. Of these Atterbury was by far the ablest, and in England was the life and soul of Jacobite contriving. A great scheme was devised, which is known in history as the Atterbury Plot. The details are somewhat obscure, and the unravelling of them is complicated by the existence of another scheme contemporaneous with Atterbury’s, apparently at first independent, but which became merged in the larger design. The author of this plot was Christopher Layer, a barrister of the Middle Temple. Generally, his scheme was secretly to enlist broken and discharged soldiers. They were to seize the Tower, the Bank, and the Mint, and to secure the Hanoverian royal family, who were to be deported. The larger scheme of the Junta was to obtain a foreign force of 5000 troops to be landed in England under the Duke of Ormonde, and risings were to be organised in different parts of the kingdom. The signal for the outbreak was to be the departure of George I. for Hanover, which was expected to take place in the summer.